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LESSONS U LIFE. 


A 


SERIES OF FAMILIAR ESSAYS, 
i 


BY 


AUTHOR DP " LETTERS TO THE YOUNG," " GOLD-FOIL," ETC. 


SEVENTH EDITION. 


NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET. 

1861. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S61, 

By CHARLES SCEIBNEE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for th& 

Southern District of New York. 



3y Bxeh*see 
Army And **v &** 
13 M* 



JOHN F. TROTT, 

rRITTTER, STEREOTYPER, AST) ELECTROTYPES, 

48 & 50 Greene Street, 

New York. 






PREFACE 



The quick and cordial reception which greeted 
the author's " Letters to the Young," and his more 
recent series of essays entitled " Gold Foil," and 
the constant and substantial friendship which has 
been maintained by the public toward those pro- 
ductions, must stand as his apology for this third 
venture in a kindred field of effort. It should be 
— and probably is — unnecessary for the author to 
say that in this book, as in its predecessors, he has 
aimed to be neither brilliant nor profound. He 
has endeavored, simply, to treat in a familiar and 
attractive way a few of the more prominent ques- 
tions which concern the life of every thoughtful 
man and woman. Indeed, he can hardly pretend to 



Preface. 



have done more than to organize, and put into 
form, the average thinking of those who read his 
books — to place before the people the sum of their 
own choicer judgments— and he neither expects 
nor wishes for these essays higher praise than that 
which accords to them the quality of common 
sense. 



Springfield, Mass., 
November, 1861. 



CONTENTS 



LESSON I. PAGE 

Moods and Frames of Mind, 9 

LESSON II. 
Bodily Imperfections and Impediments, 25 

LESSON III. 
Animal Content, 39 

LESSON IV. 
Reproduction in Kind, 54 

LESSON V. 
Truth and Truthfulness, 68 

LESSON VI. 
Mistakes of Penance, 83 

LESSON VII. 
The Rights of Woman, 96 

LESSON VIII. 
American Public Education, 109 

LESSON IX. 
Perverseness, 123 

LESSON X. 
Undeveloped Resources, 137 



8 Contents. 


LESSON XI. 
Greatness in Littleness, 

LESSON XII. 
Rural Life, 


PAGE 
150 

162 


LESSON XIII. 
Repose, 


1T7 


LESSON XIV. 
The Ways of Charity, 


192 


LESSON XV. 




LESSON XVI. 


222 


LESSON XVII. 




LESSON XVIII. 
Fore Spots and Sensitive Spots, 


250 


LESSON XIX. 




LESSON XX. 


278 


LESSON XXI. 




LESSON XXII. 
The Poetic Test, 


305 


LESSON XXIII. 




LESSON XXIV. 


333 







LESSONS IN LIFE. 



LESSON I. 

MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND. 

" That blessed mood 
In which the burden of the mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 
Is lightened." Wordsworth. 

" Ob, blessed temper, whose unclouded ray 
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day." 

Pope. 

" My heart and mind and self, never in tune; 
Sad for the most part, then in such a flow 
Of spirits, I seem now hero, now buffoon ," 

Leigh Hunt. 

IT rained yesterday ; and, though it is midsummer, 
it is unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, 
with almost a steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very 
deeply green. The shadows among the woods are 
black and massive, and the whole face of nature looks 
painfully clean, like that of a healthy little boy who 



10 Leffons in Life. 

has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold water. 
I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and 
that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this 
morning. I look out from my window, and think how 
delightful it would be to take a seat in the sun, down 
under the fence, across the street. It seems to me that 
if I could sit there awhile, and get warm, I could think 
better and write better. Toasting in the sunlight is 
i conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should 
; be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence 
labor, and this looking out of the window and longing 
for an accession of strength, or warmth, or inspiration, 
or something or other not easily named, calls back to 
me an experience of childhood. 

It was summer, and I was attending school. The 
seats were hard, and the lessons were dry, and the 
walls of the school-room were very cheerless. An in- 
dulgent, sweet-faced girl was my teacher ; and I pre- 
sume that she felt the irksomeness of the confinement 
quite as severely as I did. The weather was delight- 
ful, and the birds were singing everywhere ; and the 
thought came to me, that if I could only stay out of 
doors, and lie down hi the shadow of a tree, I could 
get my lesson. I begged the privilege of trying the 
experiment. The kind heart that presided over the 
school-room could not resist my petition ; so I was 
soon lying in the coveted shadow. I went to work 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 11 

very severely ; but the next moment found my eyes 
wandering ; and heart, feeling, and fancy were going up 
and down the earth in the most vagrant fashion. It 
was hopeless dissipation to sit under the tree ; and 
discovering a huge rock on the hillside, I made my 
way to that, to try what virtue there might be in a 
shadow not produced by foliage. Seated under the 
brow of the boulder, I again applied myself to the 
dim-looking text, but it had become utterly meaning- 
less ; and a musical cricket under the rock would have 
put me to sleep if I had permitted myself to remain. 
I found that neither tree nor rock would lend me help ; 
but down in the meadow I saw the brook sparkling, 
and spanning it, a little bridge where I had been ac- 
customed to sit, hanging my feet over the water, and 
angling for minnows. It seemed as if the bridge and 
the water might do something for me, and, in a few min- 
utes, my feet were dangling from the accustomed seat. 
There, almost under my nose, close to the bottom of 
the clear, cool stream, lay a huge speckled trout, fan- 
ning the sand with his slow fins, and minding nothing 
about me at all. "What could a boy do with Colburn's 
First Lessons, when a living trout, as large and nearly 
as long as his arm, lay almost within the reach of his 
fingers ? How long I sat there I do not know, but the 
tinkle of a distant bell startled me, and I startled the 
trout, and fish and vision faded before the terrible con- 



12 Leffons in Life. 

sciousness that I knew less of my lesson than I did 
when I left the school-house. 

This has always been my fortune when running 
after, or looking for, moods. There is a popular hal- 
lucination that makes of authors a romantic people 
who are entirely dependent upon moods and mo- 
ments of inspiration for the power to labor in their 
peculiar way. Authors are supposed to write when 
they "feel like it," and at no other time. Visions 
of Byron with a gin-bottle at his side, and a beautiful 
woman hanging over his shoulder, dashing off a dozen 
stanzas of Childe Harold at a sitting, flit through the 
brains of sentimental youth. We hear of women who 
are seized suddenly by an idea, as if it were a colic, 
or a flea, often at midnight, and are obliged to rise 
and dispose of it in some way. We are told of very 
delicate girls who carry pencils and cards with them, 
to take the names and address of such angels as may 
visit them in out-of-the-way places. We read of poets 
who go on long sprees, and after recovery retire to 
their rooms and work night and day, eating not and 
sleeping little, and in some miraculous way producing 
wonderful literary creations. The mind of a literary 
man is supposed to be like a shallow summer brook, 
that turns a mill. There is no water except when it 
rains, and the weather being very fickle, it is never 
known when there will be water. Sometimes, how- 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 13 

ever, there comes a freshet, and then the mill runs 
night and day, until the water subsides, and another 
dry time comes on. , 

Now, while I am aware, as every writer must be, 
that the brain works very much better at some times 
than it does at others, I can declare without reserva- 
tion, that no man who depends upon moods for the 
power to write can possibly accomplish much. I know 
men who rely upon their moods, alike for the disposi- 
tion and the ability to write, but they are, without ex- 
ception, lazy and inefficient men. They never have ac- 
conrplished much, and they never will accomplish much. 
Regular eating, regular sleeping, regular working — 
these are the secrets of all true literary success. A man 
may throw off a single little poem by a spasm, but he 
cannot write a poem of three thousand lines by spasms. 
Spasms that produce poems like this, must last from 
five to seven hours a day, through six days of every 
week, and four weeks of every month, until the work 
shall be finished. There is no good reason why the 
mind will not do its best by regular exercise and 
usage. The mower starts in the morning with a lame 
back and with aching joints ; but he keeps on mowing, 
and the glow rises, and the perspiration starts, and he 
becomes interested in his labor, and, at length, he finds 
himself at work with full efficiency. He was not in 
the mood for mowing when he began, but mowing 



24 Leffons in Life. 

brought its own mood, and he knew it would when he 
began. The mind is sometimes lame in the morning. 
It refuses to go to work. Our wills seem entirely in- 
sufficient to drive it to its tasks ; but if it be driven to 
its work and held to it persistently, and held thus every 
day, it will ultimately be able to do its best every day. 
A man who works his brains for a living, must work 
them just as regularly as the omnibus-driver does his 
horses. 

We sometimes go to church and hear a preacher 
who depends upon his moods for the power to preach 
his best. He preaches well, and we say that he is in 
the mood ; and then again he preaches poorly, and we 
say that he is not in the mood. A public singer who 
has the power to move us at her will, comes into the 
concert-room, and gives her music without spirit and 
without making any apparent effort to please. We 
say that Madame or Mademoiselle is "not in the mood 
to-night." A lecturer has his moods, which, appa- 
rently, he slips on and off as he would a dressing-gown, 
charming the people of one town by his eloquence and 
elegance, and disgusting another by his dullness and 
carelessness. We are in the habit of saying that cer- 
tain men are very unequal in their performances, which 
is only a way of saying that they are moody, and de- 
pendent upon and controlled by moods. I think that, 
in any work or walk of life, a man can in a great de- 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 15 

gree become the master of his moods, so that, as a 
preacher, or a singer, or a lecturer, he can do his best 
every time quite as regularly as a writer can do his 
best every time. Mr. Benedict somewhat inelegantly 
remarked, when in this country, that the reason of 
Jenny Lind's success was, that she " made a conscience 
of her art." If we had asked Mr. Benedict to explain 
himself, he probably would have said that she con- 
scientiously did her best every time, in every place. 
This was true of Jenny Lind. She never failed. She 
sang just as well in the old church where the country 
people had flocked to greet her, as in the halls of the 
metropolis. Yet Jenny Lind was decidedly a woman 
of moods, and indulged in them when she could af- 
ford it. 

The power of the will over moods of the mind is very 
noticeable in children. Children often rise in the morn- 
ing in any thing but an amiable frame of mind. Petu- 
lant, impatient, quarrelsome, they cannot be spoken to 
or touched without producing an explosion of ill-nature. 
Sleep seems to have been a bath of vinegar to them, 
and one would think the fluid had invaded their mouth 
and nose, and eyes and ears, and had been absorbed by 
every pore of their sensitive skins. In a condition like 
this, I have seen them bent over the parental knee, and 
their persons subjected to blows from the parental 
palm ; and they have emerged from the infliction with 



16 Leffons in Life. 

the vinegar all expelled, and their faces shining like the 
morning — the transition complete and satisfactory to all 
the parties. Three-quarters of the moods that men 
and women find themselves in, are just as much under 
the control of the will as this. The man who rises in 
the morning, with his feelings all bristling like the quills 
of a hedge-hog, simply needs to "be knocked down. 
Like a solution of certain salts, he requires a rap to 
make him crystallize. A great many mean things are 
done in the family for which moods are put forward as 
the excuse, when the moods themselves are the most 
inexcusable things of all. A man or a woman in tol- 
erable health has no moral right to indulge in an un- 
pleasant mood, or to depend upon moods for the per- 
formance of the duties of life. If a bad mood come 
to such persons as these, it is to be shaken off by a 
direct effort of the will, under all circumstances. 

There are moods, however, for which men are not 
responsible, and the parent of these is sickness — the fee- 
ble or inharmonious movements of the body. When my 
little boy wakes in the morning, his smile is as blight as 
the pencil of sunlight that lies across his coverlet ; but 
when evening comes, he is peevish and fretful. The 
little limbs are weary, and the mood is produced by 
weariness. So my friend with a harassing cough is in 
a melancholy mood, and my bilious friend is in a severe 
and savage mood, or in a dark and gloomy mood, or 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 17 

in a petulant mood, or in a fearful or foreboding mood. 
In truth, bile is the prolific mother of moods. The 
stream of life flows through the biliary duct. When 
that is obstructed, life is obstructed. When the 
golden tide sets back upon the liver, it is like back- 
water under a mill ; it stops the driving-wheel. Bile 
spoils the peace of families, breaks off friendships, cuts 
off man from communion with his Maker, colors w r hole 
systems of theology, transforms brains into putty, and 
destroys the comfort of a jaundiced world. The fa- 
mous Dr. Abernethy had his hobby, as most famous 
men have ; and this hobby was " blue pill and ipecac," 
which he prescribed for every thing, with the supposi- 
tion, I presume, that all disease has its origin in the 
liver. Most moods, I am sure, have their birth in the 
derangements of this important organ ; and while the 
majority of them can be controlled, there are others 
for which their victims are not responsible. There are 
men who cannot insult me, because I will not take an in- 
sult from them any more than I would from a man in- 
toxicated. When their bile starts, I am sure they will 
come to me and apologize. 

We all have acquaintances who are men of moods. 
Whenever we meet them, we try to determine which 
of their moods is dominant, that we may know how to 
treat them. If the severe mood be on, we would just 
as soon think of whistling at a funeral as indulging in a 



18 Leffons in Life. 

. jest ; but if the cloud be off, we have a sprightly friend 
and a pleasant time with him. Goldsmith's pedagogue 
was a man of moods, and his pupils understood them. 

"A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper, circling round, 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned." 

While I maintain that a man can generally be the mas- 
ter of his moods, I am very well aware that but few 
men are ; and it is wise for us to know how to deal 
with them. The secret of many a man's success in the 
world resides in his insight into the moods of men, and 
his tact in dealing with them. Modern Christian phi- 
lanthropists tell us that if we would do good to the 
soul of a starving child, we must first put food into his 
mouth, and comfortable clothing upon his body. This, 
by way of manifesting a practical interest in his wel- 
fare, and paving our way to his heart by a form of 
kindness which he can thoroughly appreciate. But 
there is more in such an act than this, — we change his 
mood. From a mood of despair or discouragement, 
we translate him into a mood of cheerfulness and hope- 
fulness ; and then we have a soul to deal with that is 
surrounded by the conditions of improvement. There 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 19 

is much more than divine duty and Christian forgive- 
ness in the injunction : " if thine enemy hunger, feed 
him ; if he thirst, give him drink." The highest wis- 
dom would dictate such a policy for changing his mood, 
and bringing him into a condition in which he could 
entertain a sense of his meanness. 

It is curious to see how much fulness and emptiness 
of stomach have to do with moods. A business man 
who has been at work hard all day, will enter his house 
for dinner as crabbed as a hungry bear — crabbed be- 
cause he is as hungry as a hungry bear. The wife 
understands the mood, and, while she says little to 
him, is careful not to have the dinner delayed. In the 
mean time, the children watch him cautiously, and do 
not tease him with questions. When the soup is gulped, 
and he leans back and wipes his mouth, there is an evi- 
dent relaxation, and his wife ventures to ask for the 
news. When the roast beef is disposed of, she pre- 
sumes upon gossip, and possibly upon a jest ; and when, 
at last, the dessert is spread upon the table, all hands 
are merry, and the face of the husband and father, which 
entered the house so pinched and savage and sharp, be- 
comes soft and full and beaming as the face of the 
round summer moon. Children are very sensitive to the 
influence of hunger ; and often when we think that we 
are witnessing some fearful proof of the total depravity 
of human nature in a young child, we are only witnessing 



20 Leffons in Life. 



the natural expression of a desire for bread and milk. 
Tlie politicians and all that class of men who have axes 
to grind, understand this business very thoroughly. If 
a measure is to be carried through, and any man wishes 
to secure votes for it, he gives a dinner. If a man 
wishes for a profitable contract, he gives a dinner. If 
he is up for a fat office, he gives a dinner. If it is de- 
sirable that a pair of estranged friends be brought to- 
gether, and reconciled to each other, they are invited 
to a dinner. If hostile interests are to be harmonized, 
and clashing measures compromised, and divergent 
forces brought into parallelism, all must be effected by 
means of a dinner. A good dinner produces a good 
mood, — at least, it produces an impressible mood. 
The will relaxes wonderfully under the influence of 
iced champagne, and canvas-backs are remarkable 
softeners of prejudice. The daughter of Herodias 
took Herod at a great disadvantage, when she came in 
and danced before him and his friends. at his birth-day 
supper, and secured the head of John the Baptist. No 
one, I presume, believes that if she had undertaken to 
dance before him when he was hungry, she would have 
had the offer of a gift equal to the half of his kingdom. 
It is more than likely that, under any other circum- 
stances, she would have been told to " sit down and 
show less." It is by means of food and drink, and 
various entertainments of the senses, that moods are 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 21 

manufactured, and used as media of approach to the 
wills which it is desirable to bend or direct. 

I have found moods to be very poor tests of charac- 
ter. Having cut through the crust of a most forbidding 
mood, produced by bodily derangement or constant 
and pressing labor of the brain, I have often found a 
heart full of all the sweetest and richest traits of hu- 
manity. I have found, too, that some natures know 
the door that leads through the moods of other natures. 
There are men who never present their moody side to 
me. My neighbor enters their presence and finds them 
severe in aspect, hard in feeling, and abrupt in speech. 
I go in immediately after, and open the door right 
through that mood, into the genial good heart that sits 
behind it, and the door always files open when I come. 
I know men whose mood is usually exceedingly pleas- 
ant. There is a glow of health upon their faces. Their 
words are musical to women and children. They are 
cheerful and chipper and sunshiny, and not easily 
moved to anger ; and yet I know them to be liars and 
full of selfishness. Under their sweet mood, which 
sound health and a not over-sensitive conscience and 
the satisfactions of sense engender, they conceal hearts 
that are as false and foul as any that illustrate the reign 
of sin in human nature. Many a Christian has times of 
feeling that God is in a special manner smiling upon 
him, and communing with him, and filling him with the 



22 Leffons in Life. 

peace and joy that only flow from heavenly fountains, 
when the truth is that he is only in a good mood. He is 
well, all the machinery of his mind and body is playing 
harmoniously, and, of course, he feels well, and that is 
all there is about it. He is not a better Christian than 
he was when he slipped into the mood, and no better 
than he will he when he slips out of it. If he really be 
a good Christian, his moods operate like clouds and 
blue sky. The sun shines all the time, and the cloudy 
moods only hide it ; — they do not extinguish it. 

There are many sad cases of insanity of a religious 
character which originate in moods. A man, through 
a period of health, has a bright and cheerful religious 
experience. The world looks pleasant to him, the 
heavens smile kindly upon him, and the Divine Spirit 
witnesses with his own that he is at peace and in har- 
mony with God. Joy thrills him as he greets the 
morning light, and peace nestles upon his heart as he 
lies clown to his nightly rest. He feels in his soul the 
influx of spiritual life from the Great Source of all life, 
as he opens it in worship and in prayer. But at length 
there comes a change. A strange sadness creeps into 
his heart. The sky that was once so bright has become 
dark. The prayer that once rose as easily as incense 
upon the still morning air, straight toward heaven, will 
not rise at all, but settles like smoke upon him, and 
fill's his eyes with tears. Something seems to have 



Moods and Frames of Mind. 23 

come "between him and his God. Strange, accusing 
voices are heard within him. However deep the 
agony that moves him, he cannot rend the cloud that 
interposes between him and his Maker. This, now, is 
simply a mood produced by ill health ; and I hope that 
everybody who reads this will remember it. Remem- 
ber that God never changes, that a man's moods are 
constantly changing, and that when a man earnestly 
seeks for spiritual peace, and cannot find it, and thinks 
that he has committed the unpardonable sin without 
knowing it, he is bilious, and needs medical treatment. 
Alas ! what multitudes of sad souls have walked out of 
this hopeless mood into a life-long insanity, when all 
they needed in the first place, perhaps, was a dose of 
blue pills, or half a dozen strings of tenpins, or a sea- 
voyage sufficiently rough for " practical purposes." 

This subject I find to be abundantly prolific, and I 
see that I have been able to do hardly more than to 
hint at its more prominent aspects. It seems to me 
that moods only need to be studied more, and to be 
better understood, to bring them very much under the 
domain of our wills. A great deal is learned when we 
know what a mood is, and know that we are subject to 
varying frames of mind, resulting from causes which 
affect our health. If I know that I am impatient and 
cross because I am hungry, then I know how to get rid 
of my mood, and how to manage it until I do get rid 



24 Leffons in Life. 

of it. If I feel unable to labor, not because I am feeble, 
but because I am not in the mood, then I have the 
mood in my hands, to be dealt with intelligently. If 
my reason tell me that it is only a mood that hides 
from me the face of my Maker, my reason will also tell 
me that my first business is to get rid of my mood, and 
that my will must approach the work, directly or in- 
directly. We are always and necessarily in some mood 
of mind — in some condition of passion or feeling. It is 
the intensification and the dominant influence of moods 
that are to be guarded against or destroyed. Moods 
are dangerous only when they obscure reason, and de- 
stroy self-control, and disturb the mental poise, and 
become the media of false impressions from all the life 
around us and within us. 



LESSON II. 

BODILY IMPEEFECTIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS. 

"I that am curtailed of this fair proportion, 
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, 
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time . 
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up." 

KlCHARD III. 

"None can be called deformed but the unkind." 
Shakspeaee. 

"'Tis true, his nature may with faults abound; 

But who will cavil when the heart is sound ? " 

Stephen Montague. 

IT is a bright June morning. The fresh grass is 
loaded with dew, every bead of which sparkles in 
the light of the brilliant sun. A big, yellow-shouldered 
bee comes booming through the open window, and 
buzzes up and down my room, and threatens my shrink- 
ing ears, and then dives through the window again ; 
and his form recedes and his hum dies away, as if it 
were the note of a reed-stop in the * c swell " of a church 
organ. There is such confusion in the songs of the 
2 



26 Leffons in Life. 



birds, that I can hardly select the different notes, so as 
to name their owners. There is a great deal of bird- 
singing that is simply what a weaver would call " fill- 
ing." Robins and bobolinks and blue-birds and sundry 
other favorites furnish the warp, and color and charac- 
terize the tapestry of a flowing, vocal morning ; while 
the little, gray-backed multitude work in the neutral 
ground tones, and bring the sweeter and more elabo- 
rate notes into beautiful relief. Thus, with a little aid 
of imagination, I get up some very exquisite fabrics — 
vocal silks and satins : — robins on a field of chickadees ; 
bobolinks and thrushes alternately on a hit-or-miss 
ground of blackbirds, wrens, and pewees. Into the 
midst of all this delicious confusion there breaks a note 
that belongs to another race of creatures; and as I 
look from my window, and see the singer, my eyes fill 
with tears. It is a little boy, possibly twelve years 
old, though he looks younger, walking with a crutch. 
One withered limb dangles as he goes. He is a cripple 
for life ; yet his face is as bright and cheerful as the 
face of the morning itself; and what do you think he is 
singing ? " Hail Columbia, happy land," at the top of 
his lungs ! The birds are merrily wheeling over his 
head, and diving through the air, and moving here and 
there as freely as the wind, yet not one among them 
carries a lighter heart than that which he is jerking 
alonsr bv the side of the little crutch. 



Bodily Imperfe&ions and Impediments. 27 

As I see how cheerfully he bears the burden of his 
hopeless halting, there comes back to me the story of 
the lame lord who sang a different sort of song — the 
lame lord who died at Missolonghi, and whose friend 
Trelawny — human jackal that he was — stole to his bed- 
side after the breath had left his body, and examined 
his clubbed feet, and then went away and wrote about 
them. Here was a man with regal gifts of mind — a 
poet of splendid genius — a titled aristocrat — a man ad- 
mired and praised wherever the English language was 
read — a man who knew that he held within himself the 
power to make his name immortal — a man with wealth 
sufficient for all grateful luxuries — yet with clubbed 
feet ; and those feet ! Ah ! how they embittered and 
spoiled that man of magnificent achievements and sub- 
lime possibilities ! It would appear, from the disgusting 
narrative of Mr. Trelawny, that he was in reality the 
only man who had ever seen Byron's feet. Those feet 
had been kept so closely hidden, or so cunningly dis- 
guised, that nobody had known their real deformity ; 
and the jDOor lord who had carried them through his 
thirty-six years of life, had done it in constantly tor- 
mented and mortified pride. Those misshapen organs 
had an important agency in making him a misanthropic, 
morbidly sensitive, unhappy, desperate man. When 
he sang, he did not forget them ; and the poor fools who 
turned down their shirt-collars, and imitated his songs, 



28 LefTons in Life. 

and thought they were inspired by his winged genius, 
had under them only a pair of halting, clubbed feet. 

There is a class of unfortunate men and women in 
the world to whom the boy and the bard have intro- 
duced us. They are not all lame : but they all think they 
have cause to be dissatisfied with the bodies God has 
given them. Perhaps they are simply ugly, and are 
aware that no one can look in their faces with other 
thought than that they are ugly. Now it is a pleasant 
thing to have a pleasant face, and an agreeable form. 
It is pleasant for a man to be large, well-shaped, and 
good-looking, and it is unpleasant for him to be small, 
and to carry an ill-shaped form and an ugly face. It is 
pleasant for a woman to feel that she has personal attrac- 
tions for those around her, and it is unpleasant for her to 
feel that no man can ever turn his eyes admiringly upon 
her. A misshapen limb, a hump in the back, a withered 
arm, a shortened leg, a clubbed foot, a hare-lip, an un- 
wieldy corpulence, a hideous leanness, a bald head — all 
these are unpleasant possessions, and all these, I sup- 
pose, give their possessors, first and last, a great deal 
of pain. Then there is the taint of an unpopular blood, 
that a whole race carry with them as a badge of humili- 
ation. I have heard of Africans who declared that 
they would willingly go through the pain of being 
skinned alive, if, at the close of the operation, they 
could become white men. There are men of genius, 



Bodily Imperfe&ions and Impediments, 29 

with plenty of white blood in their veins — with only a 
trace of Africa in their faces — whose lives are embit- 
tered by that trace ; and who know that the pure 
Anglo Saxon, if he follows his instincts, will say to him : 
" Thus far," — (through a limited range of relations,) — 
" but no further." 

From the depths of my soul I pity a man or woman 
who bears about an irremediable bodily deformity, or 
the mark of the blood of a humiliated race. I pity any 
human being who carries around a body that he feels to 
be in any sense an unpleasant one to those whom he 
meets. I pity the deformed man, and the maimed man, 
and the terribly ugly man, and the black man, and the 
white man with black blood in him, because he usually 
feels that these things bear with them a certain degree 
of humiliation. I pity the man who is not able to 
stand out in the broad sunlight, with other men, and 
to feel that he has as goodly a frame and as fine blood 
and as pleasant a presence as the average of those he 
sees around him. I do not wonder at all that many 
of these persons become soured and embittered and 
jealous. A sensitive mind, dwelling long upon mis- 
fortunes of this peculiar character, will inevitably be- 
come morbid ; and multitudes of humbler men than 
Lord Byron have cursed their fate as bitterly as he, and 
have even lifted their eyes to blaspheme the Being 
who made them. 



30 



Leffons in Life. 



The two instances which I have mentioned show us 
that there are two ways of taking misfortunes of this 
character ; and one of them seems to a good deal bet- 
ter than the other. Between the boy who ignored 
the withered leg and the crutch, and the proud j>oet 
who permitted a slight personal deformity to darken 
his whole life, there is a distance like that between 
heaven and earth. 

I believe in the law of compensation. Human lot is, 
on the whole, well averaged. A man does not possess 
great gifts of person and of mind without drawbacks 
somewhere. Either great duties are imposed upon him, 
or great burdens are put upon his shoulders, or great 
temptations assail and harass him. Something in his 
life, at some time in his life, takes it upon itself to 
reduce his advantages to the average standard. Na- 
ture gave Byron clubbed feet, but with those feet she 
gave him a genius whose numbers charmed the world 
— a genius which multitudes of commonplace or weak 
men would have been glad to purchase at the price of 
almost any humiliating eccentricity of person. But they 
were obliged to content themselves with excellent feet, 
and brains of the common kind and calibre. Providence 
had withered the little boy's leg, but the loudest song 
I have heard from a boy in a twelvemonth came from 
his lips, as he limped along alone in the open street. 
The cheerful heart in his bosom was a great compen- 






Bodily Imperfe&ions and Impediments. 31 

sation for the withered leg ; and beyond this the boy 
had reason for singing over the fact that he was forever 
released from military duty, and firemen's duty, and all 
racing about in the service of other people. There are 
individual cases of misfortune in which it is hard to de- 
tect the compensating good, but these we must call the 
" exceptions" which " prove the rule." 

But the best of all compensation for natural defects 
and deformities, is that which comes in the form of a 
peculiar love. The mother of a poor, misshapen, idiotic 
boy, will, though she have half a score of bright and 
beautiful children besides, entertain for him a peculiar 
affection. He may not be able, in his feeble-minded- 
ness, to appreciate it, but her heart brims with tender- 
ness for him. The delicate morsel is reserved for him ; 
and, if he be a sufferer, the softest pillow and the ten- 
derest nursing will be his. A love will be bestowed 
upon him which gold could not buy, and which no 
beauty of person and no brilliancy of natural gifts could 
possibly awaken. It is thus with every case of defect 
or eccentricity of person. So sure as the mother of a 
child sees in that child's person any reason for the 
world to regard it with contempt or aversion, does she 
treat it with peculiar tenderness ; as if she were com- 
missioned by God — as indeed she is — to make up to it 
in the best coinage that which the world will certainly 
neglect to bestow. 



82 LefTons in Life. 

With the world at large, however, there are certain 
conditions on which this variety of compensation is ren- 
dered ; and a man who would have compensation for 
defects of person, must accept these conditions, or fur- 
nish them. Such a man as Lord Byron would have 
been offended by pity. To have been commiserated 
on his misfortune, would have made him exceedingly 
angry. He would not allow himself to be treated as 
an unfortunate man. He bound up his feet, and made 
efforts to walk that ended in intense pain, rather than 
appear the lame man that he really was. Of course, 
there was no compensation in the tender pity and af- 
fectionate consideration of the world for him ; nor is 
there any for the sad unfortunates who inherit and ex- 
ercise his spirit. But for all those who accept their 
life with all its conditions, in a cheerful spirit, who give 
up their pride, who take their bodies .as God formed 
them, and make the best of them, there is abundant 
compensation in the affection of the world. A cheerful 
spirit, exercised in weakness, infirmity, calamity — any 
sort of misfortune — is just as sure to awaken a pecu- 
liarly affectionate interest in all observers, as a lighted 
lamp is to illuminate the objects around it. I know of 
men and women who are the favorites of a whole neigh- 
borhood — nay, a whole town — because they are cheer- 
ful, and courageous, and self-respectful under misfor- 
tune ; and I know of those who are as much dreaded 



Bodily Imperfedions and Impediments. 33 

as a pestilence, because they will not accept their lot — 
because they grow bitter and jealous — and because 
they will persist in taunts and complaints. 

The number of those who are, or who consider them- 
selves, unfortunate in their physical conformation, is 
larger than the most of us suppose. I presume that at 
least one-half of the readers of this essay are any thing 
but well satisfied with the " tabernacle" in which they 
reside. One man wishes he were a little larger ; one 
woman wishes she were a little smaller ; one does not 
like her complexion, or the color of her eyes and hair ; 
one has a nose too large ; another has a nose too small ; 
one has round shoulders ; another has a low forehead ; 
and so every one becomes a critic of his or her style of 
structure. When we find a man or a woman who is ab- 
solutely faultless in form and features, we usually find a 
fool. I do not remember that I ever met a very hand- 
some man or woman, who was not as vain and shallow 
as a peacock. I recently met a magnificent woman of 
middle age at a railroad station. She was surrounded 
by all those indescribable somethings and nothings 
which mark the rich and well-bred traveller, and her 
face was queenly — not sweet and pretty like a doll's 
face — but handsome and stylish, and strikingly impres- 
sive, so that no man could look at her once without 
turning to look again ; yet I had not been in her pres- 
ence a minute, before I found, to my utter disgust, that 



34 



LeiTons in Life. 



the old creature was as Tain of her charms as a spoiled 
girl, and gloried in the attention which she was con^ 
scious her face everywhere attracted. It would seem 
as if nature, in making up mankind, had always been a 
little short of materials, so that, if special attention 
were bestowed upon the form and face, the brain 
suffered ; and if the brain received particular atten- 
tion, why then there was something lacking in the 
body. 

This large class of malcontents generally find some 
way of convincing themselves, however, that they are 
as good-looking as the average of mankind. They 
make a good deal of some special points of beauty, and 
imagine that these quite overshadow their defects. 
Still, there is a portion of them who can never do this ; 
and I think of them with a sadness which it is impossi- 
ble for me to express. For a homely — even an ugly 
man — I have no pity to spare. I never saw one so 
ugly yet, that if he had brains and a heart, he could not 
find a beautiful woman sensible enough to marry him. 
But for the hopelessly plain and homely sisters — " these 
tears ! " There is a class of women who know that 
they possess in their persons no attractions for men, — 
that then faces are homely, that their frames are ill- 
formed, that their carriage is clumsy, and that, what- 
ever may be their gifts of mind, no man can have the 
slightest desire to possess their j>ersons. That there 



Bodily Imperfe&ions and Impediments. 35 

are compensations for these women, I have no doubt, 
but many of them fail to find them. Many of them 
feel that the sweetest sympathies of life must be re- 
pressed, and that there is a world of affection from 
which they must remain shut out forever. It is hard 
for a woman to feel that her person is not pleasing — 
harder than for a man to feel thus. I would tell why, 
if it were necessary — for there is a bundle of very in- 
teresting philosophy tied up in the matter — but I will 
content myself with stating the fact, and permitting my 
readers to reason about it as they will. 

Now, if a homely woman, soured and discouraged 
by her lot, becomes misanthropic and complaining, she 
will be as little loved as she is admired ; but if she 
accepts her lot good-naturedly, makes up her mind to 
be happy, and is determined to be agreeable in all her 
relations to society, she will be everywhere surrounded 
by loving and sympathetic hearts, and find herself a 
greater favorite than she would be were she beautiful. 
A woman who is entirely beyond the reach of the jeal- 
ousy of her own sex, is an exceedingly fortunate 
woman ; and if personal homeliness has won for her 
this immunity, then homeliness has given her much to 
be thankful for. A homely woman who ignores her 
face and form, cultivates her mind and manners, good- 
naturedly gives up all pretension, and exhibits in all 
her life a true and a pure heart, will have friends 



36 Leffons in Life. 



enough to compensate her entirely for the loss of a 
husband. Friendship is unmindful of faces, in the se- 
lection of its objects, even if love be somewhat particu- 
lar, and, sometimes, foolishly fastidious. 

Life is altogether too precious a gift to be thrown 
away. A man who would permit a field to be over- 
grown with weeds and thorns simply because it would 
not naturally produce roses, would be very foolish, 
particularly if the ground should only need cultivation 
to enable it to yield abundantly of corn. Far be it 
from me to depreciate physical symmetry and personal 
comeliness. They are gifts of God, and they are very 
good ; but there are better things in this world than a 
good face, and better things than the admiration which 
a good face wins. I am more and more convinced, as 
the years pass away, that the choicest thing this world 
has for a man is affection — not any special variety of 
affection, but the approval, the sympathy, and the devo- 
tion of true hearts. It is not necessary that this affec- 
tion come from the great and the powerful. If it be 
genuine, that is all the heart asks. It does not criti- 
cize and graduate the value of the fountains from which 
it springs. It is at these fountains particularly that 
the unfortunates of the world are permitted to drink. 
They have only to accept cheerfully the conditions of 
their lot, and to give free and full play to all that is 
good and generous in them, to secure in an unusual 



Bodily Imperfe&ions and Impediments, 37 

degree the love of those into whose intimate society 
Providence has thrown them. 

It is stated by Dr. Livingstone, the celebrated ex- 
plorer of Africa, that the blow of a lion's paw upon his 
shoulder, which was so severe as to break his arm, 
completely annihilated fear ; and he suggests that it is 
possible that Providence has mercifully arranged, that 
all those beasts that prey upon life shall have power to 
destroy the sting of death in the animals which are 
their natural victims. I do not believe that this power 
is mercifully assigned to beasts of prey alone, but that 
the misfortunes that assail our limbs and forms, in 
whatever shape and at whatever time they may come, 
bring with them something which lightens the blow, 
or obviates the pain, if we will accept it. There is a 
calm consciousness in every soul, however harshly the 
lion's paw may fall upon the body which it inhabits, 
that it is itself invulnerable — that whatever may be the 
condition of the body, the soul cannot be injured by 
physical forms or forces. 

Physical calamity never comes with the power to 
extinguish that which is essential to the highest man- 
hood and womanhood, and never fails to bring with it 
a motive for the adjustment of the soul to its condi- 
tions. The little boy whose " Hail Columbia " has 
been ringing in my ears all day, accepted the condi- 
tions of his life, and the sting of his calamity has de- 



38 



Leffons in Life. 



parted. It is pleasant to say to him, and to all the 
brotherhood and sisterhood of ugliness and lameness, 
that there is every reason to believe that there is no 
such thing in heaven as a one-legged or a club-footed 
soul — no such thing as an ugly or a misshapen soul — no 
such thing as a blind or a deaf soul — no such thing as a 
soul with tainted blood in its veins ; and that out of 
these imperfect bodies will spring spirits of consum- 
mate perfection and angelic beauty — a beauty chas- 
tened and enriched by the humiliations that were 
visited upon their earthly habitation. 



LESSON III. 

ANIMAL CONTENT. 

"By sports like these are all their cares beguiled; 
The sports of children satisfy the child." 

Goldsmith. 

"Ay, give me back the joyous hours 
When I, myself, was ripening too ; 
When song, the fount, flung up its showers 
Of beauty, ever fresh and new." 

Goethe's Faust. 

I HAVE been watching a family of kittens, engaged 
in their exquisitely graceful play. Near them lay 
their mother, stretched at her length upon the flag- 
ging, taking her morning nap, and warming herself in 
the sun. She had eaten her breakfast, (provided by no 
care of her own, but at my expense,) had seen her lit- 
tle family fed, and having nothing further to attend to, 
had gone off into a doze. What a blessed freedom 
from care ! Think of a family of four children, with 
no frocks to be made for them, no hair to brush, no 



U 



40 Leilbns in Life. 

shoes to provide, no socks to knit and mend, no school- 
books to buy, and no nurse ! Think of a living being 
with the love of offspring in her bosom, and a multi- 
tude of marvellous instincts in her nature, yet knowing 
nothing of God, thinking not of the future, without a 
hope or an expectation, or a doubt or a fear, passing 
straight on to annihilation ! At the threshold of this 
destiny the little kittens were carelessly playing ; and 
they are doubtless still playing, while I write. They 
have no lessons to learn, they do not have to go to 
Sunday-school, they entertain no prejudices, except 
against dogs which occasionally dodge into the yard ; 
and I judge, by the familiar way in which they play 
with their mother's ears, and pounce upon her tail, that 
they are not in any degree oppressed by a sense of the 
respect due to a parent. Cat and kittens will eat, and 
frolic, and sleep, through their brief life, and then they 
will curl up in some dark corner and die. 

I remember that in one of the late Mr. Joseph C. 
ISTeal's " Charcoal Sketches," he puts into the mouth of 
a very sad and seedy loafer the expression of a wish 
that he were a pig, and a statement of the reasons for 
the wish. These reasons, as I recall them, related to 
the freedom of the pig from the peculiar trials 
and troubles of humanity. Pigs do not have to work 
for a living; they undertake no enterprizes, and of 
course fail in none; they eat and sleep through a pe- 



Animal Content. 41 

riod of months, and then come the knife and a grunt, 
and that is the last of them. ISTow I suppose this 
thought of Mr. ISTeal's loafer has been shared by mil- 
lions of men. Not that everybody has at some time in 
his life wished he were a pig, but that nearly every- 
body who has "had his share of the troubles and respon- 
sibilities of life, has looked upon simple animal care- 
lessness and content with a certain degree of envy. It 
is not necessary to go among brutes for instances of 
this animal content. It can be found among men. 
Who does not know good-natured, ignorant, healthy 
fellows, who will work all day in the field, whistle all 
the way homeward, eat hugely of course food, sleep 
like logs, and take no more interest in the great ques- 
tions which agitate the most of us, than the pigs they 
feed, and that, in return, feed them ? Who has not 
sighed, as he has seen how easily the simple wants of 
certain simple natures are supplied ? I remember an 
old man who quite unexpectedly was drafted into the 
grand jury, which sat in the county town less than ten 
miles distant from his home ; and this was the great 
event of his life. He never tired of talking about it — 
(never tired himself, I mean,) and a stranger could not 
carry on a conversation with him for five minutes, with- 
out hearing of something which occurred when "I 
was in Blanktown, on the Grand Jury." It is doubt- 
ful whether Napoleon ever contemplated a victory with 



42 Leffons in Life. 



the complacent satisfaction that filled my old friend 
when he alluded to his connection with " the grand 
jury," and emphasized the adjective which magnified 
the jury and glorified him. 

I confess that, when I pass through a rural town, 
and see the laborers among the corn, and the boys 
driving their cattle, and the girls busy in the dairies, 
and life passing away quietly, I cannot avoid a twinge 
of regret that it would be impossible for me to be con- 
tent with the kind of life that I see around me, espe- 
cially as I know that there is one kind of pleasure — 
negative, perhaps, rather than positive — which that kind 
of life enjoys, and in which I can never share. Relief 
from great responsibilities, and. contentment with hum- 
ble clothing, humble fare, humble society, humble aims 
and ambitions, humble means and humble labors — ah ! 
how many weary, overloaded men — how many disap- 
pointed hearts — have sighed for such a boon, and 
sighed knowing they could never receive it. 

It has been the habit of poets to surround simple 
pleasures and pursuits with the golden atmosphere of 
romance, — not because they would enjoy such pleas- 
ures and pursuits at all, but rather because they are 
forever beyond their possession. A poet is always 
reaching toward the unattainable, and he may reach 
forward to the perfections of a life of which the best 
that he sees around him is an intimation, or backward 



Animal Content. 43 

to the animal content of a life as yet undisturbed by 
the intimation of something better. Bucolics are very 
sweet, but their writers do not believe in them. " A 
nut-brown maid,'' with bare, unconscious feet and an- 
cles, is very pretty in a picture, but the man who 
painted her ascertained that she was green, and not 
the most entertaining of companions. The truth is, 
that when we have got along so far that we can per- 
ceive that which is poetical and picturesque in the sim- 
plest form of rustic life, we have got too far along to 
enjoy it. 

I suppose that much of the charm which simple ani- 
mal content has for us, is connected with the memories 
of childhood. We can all recall a period of our lives 
when there was joy in the consciousness of living — 
when animal life, in its spontaneous overflow, flooded 
all our careless hours with its own peculiar pleasure. 
The light was pleasant to our eyes, vigorous appetite 
and digestion made ambrosia of the homeliest fare, the 
simplest play brought delight, and life — all untried — > 
lay spread out before us in one long, golden dream. 
We now watch our children at their sports, and see 
but little difference between their sources of happiness 
and those which supply the kittens in their play. 
"Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw," they 
skip from pleasure to pleasure, and find delight in the 
impulsive exercise of their little powers. We were 



L_ 



44 Leffons in Life. 

once like them. Life was once as fresh, and flowing, 
and impulsive, and objectless, as it is with them; and 
when we are weary and oppressed with labor, and load- 
ed down with responsibility, and filled with thoughts 
of the great destiny before us, we turn our eyes back- 
ward with a sigh for days once ours, but lost forever. 
Lost forever ! This is the romantic pain that fills us 
in all our contemplations of simple animal content. It 
is lost to us, because we are lost to it. Like a passen- 
ger far out upon the sea, adventuring upon a long 
voyage, we look back upon the fading hills of our na- 
tive land, and sigh to think that the breeze which 
bears us away can never bring us back. 

The question comes to us : " What is there in our 
present life to repay us for this loss ? " There are 
multitudes who can ask this question, and answer hon- 
estly, "Nothing." It is sad, but true, that countless 
men and women have never found any thing in life 
which compensates them for the loss of the simple ani- 
mal enjoyment and content of childhood. Sickness, 
perhaps, has imposed upon them years of pain. Pov- 
erty has condemned them to labor through every wak- 
ing hour to win sustenance for themselves and their 
dependents. The heart has been cheated of its idol. 
Friends have proved false, and fortune fickle. Life 
has gone wrong through all the avenues of their being. 
Yet there are others who, while looking with pleasure 



Animal Content. 45 

upon the innocent sports of animal life, and recalling 
the simple j oys of childhood with delight, are content 
with the lot of manhood and womanhood, and would 
look upon a return to their simpler age as the great- 
est calamity that could be inflicted upon them. With 
brows wrinkled by care and toil, and heads silvered 
by premature age, and great burdens upon heart and 
brain, they glory in a life within and before them, by 
the side of which the life of childhood is as flavorless 
and frivolous as that of a fly. 

I have been much impressed by a passage in the 
"Recreations of a Country Parson," — which, by the 
way, is one of the best and cleverest books of its kind 
in the English language — in which this question is 
incidentally touched upon, and so happily touched 
upon, that I cannot refrain from transcribing the whole 
passage. The writer represents himself to be seated 
upon a manger, writing upon the flat place between his 
horse's eyes, while the docile animal's nose is between 
his knees ; and it is the horse that he addresses : — 

"For you, my poor fellow-creature, I think with sorrow as I write 
here upon your head, there remains no such immortality as remains 
for me. What a difference between us ! You to your sixteen or 
eighteen years here, and then oblivion ! — I to my threescore and ten, 
and then eternity ! Yes, the difference is immense ; and it touches 
me to think of your life and mine, of your doom and mine. I know 
a house where at morning and evening prayer, when the household 
assembles, among the servants there always walks in a shaggy little 
dog, who listens with the deepest attention and the most solemn gravity 



46 Leffons in Life. 



to all that is said, and then, when prayers are over, goes out again 
with his friends. I cannot witness that silent procedure without being 
much moved by the sight. Ah ! my fellow-creature, this is something 
in which you have no part ! Made by the same hand, breathing the 
same air, sustained like us by food and drink, you are witnessing an 
act of ours which relates to interests that do not concern you, and of 
which you have no idea. And so here we are, you standing at the 
manger, old boy, and I sitting upon it ; the mortal and the immortal, 
close together ; your nose on my knee, my paper on your head ; yet 
with something between us broader than the broad Atlantic." 

Here we find one man pitying his poor, dumb, 
unconscious companion, and the little dog that trots 
in to attend the morning prayers, because their life is 
so brief, and, more particularly, because it is so insig- 
nificant. He recognizes the feeble likeness between 
himself and them, and appreciates also the tremendous 
difference. He does not think that he would be glad 
to exchange his lot of labor and care for their careless- 
ness and content, but, reaching forward to grasp the 
hand of an immortal destiny, he sorrows that he must 
leave his dumb servants and companions behind him. 

And this is the normal view of the question. We 
rise out of semi-conscious infancy into a life of the 
senses, which goes on to perfection in our childhood. 
"We come into a state in which the mechanism of the 
body enjoys its freest play, in which the senses imbibe 
their sweetest satisfactions, and in which life either 
swells into irrepressible overflowings, or subsides into 
careless content. Looking at her children at this 



Animal Content. 47 

period of their life, many a mother has said, " Let them 
play while they can ; let them be merry while they 
may ; for they are seeing their happiest days." But 
this animal life is not all. In its perfection it is very 
beautiful, and it is good because God made it ; but it 
is only the coarse basis upon which rises a shaft, whiter 
than marble — wrought with divine devices — crowned 
by the light of Heaven. It is only those who have 
failed to secure a distinct perception of the highest 
aspect of human life, and of that which makes it char- 
acteristically human life, who can say to a child that 
he is seeing his happiest days. 

I remember with entire distinctness the moment 
when the consciousness possessed me that my child- 
hood was transcended by initial manhood, and I can 
never forget the pang that moment brought me. It 
was on a bright, moonlight night, in midwinter, when 
my mates, boisterous with life, were engaged in their 
usual games in the snow, and I had gone out expecting 
to share in their enjoyment. I had not played, or 
rather tried to play, five minutes, before I found that 
there was nothing in the play for me — that I had abso- 
lutely exhausted play as the grand pursuit of my life. 
Never since has the wild laugh of boyhood sounded so 
vacant and hollow, as it did to me that night. In an 
instant, the invisible line was crossed which separated 
a life of purely animal enjoyment from a life of moral 



48 



Leffons in Life. 



motive and responsibility, and intellectual action and 
enterprise. The old had passed away, and I had 
entered that which was new ; and I turned my steps 
homeward, leaving behind me all my companions, to 
spend a quiet evening in the chimney-corner, and dream 
of the realm that was opening before me. Such a 
moment as this comes really, though not always con- 
sciously, to every man and woman. To-day we are 
children ; to-morrow we are not. To-day we stand 
in life's vestibule ; to-morrow we are in the temple, 
awed by the sweep of the arches over us, humbled by 
the cross that fronts us, and smitten with mysteries 
that breathe upon us from the choir, or gaze at us from 
the flaming windows. 

Manhood and womanhood have their infancy en- 
tirely distinct from the infancy of childhood. The 
child is born into the world a simple, animal life — less 
helpful than a lamb, or a calf, or a kitten. There is no 
power in it, and but little of instinct. There is no 
form of life, bursting caul or shell, that awakes in vital 
air to such stupid, vacant helplessness, as a baby. It is 
out of this lump of clay, with its bones only half hard- 
ened, and its muscles little more than pulp, and its 
brain no more intelligent than an uncooked dumpling, 
that childhood is to be made. And this childhood con- 
sists of little more than a well-developed animal organ- 
ism. Nature keeps the child playing — makes it play 



Animal Content. 49 

in the open air — impels it to bring into free and joyous 
use all the powers of its little frame — and when that is 
done, and the procreative faculty has crowned all, the 
child is born again, and comes into a new infancy — the 
infancy of manhood and womanhood. Here a new life 
opens. That which gave satisfaction before, gives sat- 
isfaction no longer. Love takes newand deeper chan- 
nels. Ambition fixes its eye upon other and higher 
objects. Fresh motives address the soul, and urge it 
into new enterprises. Great cares and responsibilities 
settle slowly down upon its shoulders, and it braces 
itself up to endure them. It apprehends God and its 
relations to Him, and to its fellows ; it confronts des- 
tiny ; it arms itself for the conflicts of life ; it prepares 
for the struggle which it knows will issue in a grateful 
success or a sad disappointment • in short, it grows 
from man's infancy into man's full estate. 

Now the reason why a mother looks with a sigh 
upon her children, and says that they are seeing the 
happiest days of their life, is that she has never become 
a true woman. She has never grown out of the infancy 
of her womanhood. She has never comprehended what 
a glorious thing it is to be a woman — she has not com- 
prehended what it is to be a woman at all. What can 
be that woman's ideas of life, who thinks and declares 
that the happiest moments of her experience were those 
which were filled with the frolic of animal life ? If I 



50 Leffons in Life. 

felt like this, I should wish that my children had been 
born rabbits, or squirrels, or lambs, or kittens, because 
they, having enjoyed the pleasures of the animal, will 
never awake to the woes of another type of life. The 
real reason why any man sings from the heart, 

" 0, would I were a boy again," 

is, that he is " stuck" — to use a homely but expressive 
word — between boyhood and manhood, and, not feel- 
ing up to his position, has a very strong disposition to 
back out of it. The man who really wishes he were a 
boy, is either painfully conscious of the loss of the purity 
of his boyhood, or he has the cowardly disposition to 
shirk the responsibilities of his life. The romantic 
regard which we all entertain for the simple animal 
content and joy of childhood, is a very different thing 
to this. It was Mr. deal's loafer that really wished he 
were a pig ; and it is a loafer always who would retire 
from man's duties and estate, into the content either 
of childhood or kittenhood. 

It i3 very natural that a man should be blinded and 
pained by passing from a shaded room into dazzling 
sunlight. It is a serious thing to leap from a luxurious, 
enervating warm bath into cold water. All sudden 
transitions are shocking ; and God has contrived the 
transitions of our lives so that they shall be mainly 
gradual. It is not to be wondered at that many men 



Animal Content. 



51 



and women, by having the responsibilities of men and 
women thrust upon them too early, are shocked, and 
look back upon the shady places they have left, and 
long to rest their eyes there. It is not strange that 
men recoil from a plunge into the world's cold waters, 
and long to creep back into the bath from which they 
have suddenly risen. But that man or woman, having 
fully passed into the estate of man and woman, should 
desire to become children again, is impossible. It is 
only the half-developed, the badly-developed, the im- 
perfectly nurtured, the mean-spirited, and the demor- 
alized, who look back to the innocence, the helpless- 
ness, and the simple animal joy and content of childhood 
with genuine regret for their loss. I want no better 
evidence that a person's life is regarded by himself as 
a failure, than that furnished by his honest willingness 
to be restored to his childhood. When a man is ready 
to relinquish the power of his mature reason, his strength 
and skill for self-support, the independence of his will 
and life, his bosom companion and children, his interest 
in the stirring affairs of his time, his part in deciding 
the great questions which agitate his age and nation, 
his intelligent apprehension of the relations which exist 
between himself and his Maker, and his rational hope 
of immortality — if he have one — for the negative 
animal content, and frivolous enjoyments of a child, 
he does not deserve the name of a man; — he is a 



52 Leffons in Life. 



weak, unhealthy, broken-down creature, or a base pol- 
troon. 

Yet I know there are those who will read this sen- 
tence with tears, and with complaint. I know there 
are those whose existence has been a long struggle with 
sickness and trial — whose lives have been crowded with 
great griefs and disappointments — who sit in darkness 
and impotency while the world rolls by them. They 
have seen no joy and felt no content since childhood, 
and many of them look with genuine pity upon children, 
because the careless creatures do not know into what 
a heritage of sin and sorrow they are entering. I have 
only to say to them, that the noblest exhibitions of man- 
hood and womanhood I have ever seen, or the world 
has ever seen, have been among their number. A 
woman with the hope of heaven in her eyes, incor- 
ruptible virtue in her heart, and honesty in every 
endeavor, has smiled serenely, a million times in this 
world, while her life and all its earthly expectations 
were in ruins. Patient sufferers upon beds of pain 
have forgotten childhood years ago, and, feeding their 
souls on prayer, have looked forward with unutterable 
joy to the transition from womanhood to angelhood. 
Men, utterly forsaken by friends — contemned, derided, 
proscribed, persecuted — have stood by their convic- 
tions with joyful heroism and calm content. Nay, 
great multitudes have marched with songs upon their 



Animal Content. 53 

tongues to the rack and the stake. The noblest spec- 
tacle the world affords is that of a man or woman, 
rising superior to sorrow and suffering — transforming 
sorrow and suffering into nutriment — accepting those 
conditions of their life which Providence prescribes, 
and building themselves up into an estate from whose 
summit the step is short to a glorified humanity. 

Before me hangs the portrait of an old man — the 
only man I ever loved with a devotion that has never 
faded, though long years have passed away since he 
died. His calm blue eyes look down upon me, and I 
look into them, and through them I look into a golden 
memory — into a life of self-denial — into a meek, toiling, 
honest, heroic Christian manhood — into an uncomplain- 
ing spirit — into a grateful heart — into a soul that never 
sighed over a lost joy, though all his earthly enterprises 
miscarried. The tracery of care and of sickness is upon 
his haggard features, but I see in them, and in the soul 
which they represent to me, the majesty of manliness. 
While I look, the kittens still play at the door, and the 
noise of shouting children is in the street ; but ah ! how 
shallow is the life they represent, compared with that 
of which this dumb canvas tells me ! It is better to be 
a man or a woman, than to be a child. It is better to 
be an angel than to be either. Let us look forward — 
never backward. 



LESSON IV. 

EEPKODUCTION IN KIND. 

'* Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 

St. Paul to the Galatiaits. 

" Ye shall know them by their fruits : Do men gather grapes of thorns, or 
figs of thistles ? " — St. Matthew's Gospel. 

IT was fitting that one of the most characteristic and 
beautiful laws of life should be announced in the 
opening chapter of the Holy Bible. It was clothed in 
the form of an ordinance, as became it : " Let the earth 
bring forth the living creature after his kind, and every- 
thing that creepeth upon the earth, after his kind." 
From that day to this, every living thing — beast, bird 
and insect, tree, shrub and plant — has produced after 
its kind. It is a law that runs through all animal and 
vegetable life. Each family in the great world of living 
forms was created for a special purpose, and was intended 
to remain pure and distinctive until the termination of 



Reproduction in Kind. 55 

its mission. Whenever the family boundaries are over- 
stepped, the curse of nature is breathed upon the gen- 
erative functions, and the illegitimate product dies out, 
or subsides into hopeless degeneration. The mule is a 
monster, and has no progeny. 

A plant, or a tree, never forgets itself. Cheat it of 
its root, and the stem remains faithful. The minutest 
twig, put out to nurse upon the arm of a foreign 
mother, feels the thrill of the great primal law in its 
filmiest fibre, and breathes in every expression of its 
life its fidelity. If you will walk with me into the 
garden, I will show you a mountain-ash in full bloom ; 
but on the top of it you will see a strange little cluster 
of pear-blossoms. A twig from a Seckel pear-tree was, 
two or three years since, engrafted there. It had a 
hard time in uniting its being to that of the alien ash, 
but it loved life, and so, at length, it consented to join 
itself to the transplanted forest tree. It was weak and 
alone, but it kept its law. Spring bathed the ash with 
its own peculiar bloom, and autumn hung it with its 
clusters of scarlet berries, and it was hidden from sight 
by the redundant foliage, but it kept its law. The 
roots of the mountain-ash, blindly reaching in the 
ground and imbibing its juices, knew nothing of the 
little orphaned twig above, that waited for its food ; but 
they could not cheat it of its law. Up to a certain 
point of a certain bough the rising fluids came under 



56 Leffons in Life. 



the law of the mountain-ash, and there they found a 
gateway, guarded by an angel that gave them a new 
commandment. " Thus far — mountain-ash : beyond — 
Seckel pear ; " and if, in October, you will walk in the 
garden again with me, I will show you among the 
scarlet berries, bending heavily toward you, the clus- 
tered succulence of the Seckel. 

A seedsman may cheat you, but a seed never does. 
If you plant corn, it never comes up potatoes. If you 
sow wheat, it never comes up rye. Wrapped up in 
every capsule, bound up in every kernel, packed into 
every minutest germ, is this law, written by God at the 
beginning, "Produce thou after thy kind." So the 
whole living world goes on producing after its kind. 
Year after year we visit the seedsman, and read the 
labels on his drawers and packages, and bear home and 
plant in our gardens the little homely germs that keep 
God's law so well ; and summer rewards our trust in 
them with beautiful flowers, and autumn with bounti- 
ful fruition. Robins sang the same song to the Pilgrim 
Fathers that they sing to us. The may-flower breathes 
the same fragrance now that it breathed in the fingers 
of Rose Standish; and man and woman, producing 
after their kind, are the same to-day that they were 
three thousand years ago. 

Now there is a significance in all the laws of material 
life, above and beyond their special office. They do the 



Reproduction in Kind. 57 

work they were set to do ; they rule the life they were 
appointed to rule ; but the laws, themselves, belong to a 
family whose branches run through all intellectual, moral, 
and spiritual life. Laws live in groups no less uniformly 
than the existences which they inform and govern. 
It is a law, both of animal and vegetable structures, 
that they shall grow by what they feed on ; but this 
law passes the bounds of matter, and finds its widest 
meaning and its most extended application beyond. 
The mind grows by what it feeds on ; the heart grows 
by what it feeds on ; love, hate, jealousy, revenge, 
fortitude, courage, grow by what they feed on ; spiritu- 
ality grows by what spirituality feeds on. Wherever 
growth goes, through all the realm of God, this law 
goes ; and the law that every thing that produces shall 
produce after its kind, is just as universal as this. It 
begins in material life, and runs up through all life. 
Rather, perhaps, I should say, that it begins in spiritual 
life, and seeks embodiment in material life, so that we 
may apprehend it. The clouds were in heaven before 
there was any rain, and the rain comes down from 
heaven to tell us what the clouds are made of. I might 
go further, and say that every form of matter is but 
the embodiment of a divine thought, and that, with 
that thought, there passes into matter the laws that 
reside in divine things of corresponding nature and 
office. 

3* 



58 Leffons in Life. 

But I am becoming abstruse — quite too much so, 
considering the simple, practical truths to which I am 
seeking to introduce my reader. I have been thinking 
how, in accordance with this law of which we are talk- 
ing, our moods, our passions, our sympathies, our moral 
frames and conditions, reproduce themselves, after their 
kind, in the minds and lives around us. I call my child 
to my knee in anger ; I strike him a hasty blow that 
carries with it the peculiar sting of anger ; I speak a 
loud reproof that bears with it the spirit of anger ; and 
I look in vain for any relenting in his flashing eyes, 
flushed face, and compressed lips. I have made my 
child angry, and my uncontrolled passion has produced 
after its kind. I have sown ang©r, and I have reaped 
anger instantaneously. Perhaps I become still more 
angry, in consequence of the passion manifested by my 
child, and I speak and strike again. He is weak and I 
am strong ; but, though he bow his head, crushed into 
silence, I may be sure that there is a sullen heart in the 
little bosom, and anger the more bitter because it is 
impotent. I put the child away from me, and think of 
what I have done. I am full of relentings. I long to 
ask his pardon, for I know that I have offended and 
deeply injured one of Christ's little ones. I call him to 
me again, press his head to my breast, kiss him, and 
weep. No word is spoken, but the little bosom heaves, 
the little heart softens, the little eyes grow tenderly 



Reprodu&ion in Kind. 59 

penitent, the little hands come up and clasp my neck, 
and my relentings and my sorrow have produced after 
their kind. The child is conquered, and so am I. 

If I utter fretful words, they come back to me like 
echoes. If I bristle all over with irritability, the quills 
will begin to rise all about me. One thoroughly ir- 
ritable person in a breakfast-room spoils coffee and 
toast, sours milk, and destroys appetite for a whole 
family. He produces after his kind. 

Generally, a man has around him those who are like 
him. If he be a man of strong nature and positive 
qualities, he will plant his moods and grow them in the 
natures next to him. Of course there must be excep- 
tions to this rule, because the will is free and man is 
reasonable, and the motive and power to pluck up un- 
welcome seed, and unpleasant growths, inheres in all 
men. I have known a good-natured man to live with a 
pettish, ill-natured, jealous, fault-finding wife through all 
the years of my acquaintance with him, he meantime 
growing no worse, and she growing no better. They 
had voluntarily and effectually shut themselves each 
from the influence of the other. He had closed his 
spirit against that which was bad in her, and she had 
closed her spirit against that which was good in him ; so 
she went on fretting through life, and he very good- 
naturedly laughing at her. We see this thing through 
all society. We see innocent girls grow up into virtue, 



60 Leffons in Life. 

though surrounded on every side by vicious example. 
We see natures and characters everywhere which refuse 
to receive the seed that falls upon them from the natures 
and characters of others ; but this makes nothing against 
the universality of the law we are considering. Gen- 
erally, I repeat, a man has around him those who are 
like him. The soil of a social circle is usually open, and 
whatever falls into it produces after its kind, whether it 
be good nature, or ill nature, purity or impurity, faith or 
skepticism, love or hate. 

It would appear, therefore, that there is no way by 
which we can surround ourselves by good society so 
readily as by being good ourselves. If we plant-good 
seed, we may calculate with a great degree of certainty 
upon securing good fruit. If I plant frankness and 
open-heartedness, I expect to reap them ; and I have 
no right to expect to reap them unless I plant them. 
If I go to a man with my heart in my hand, I have 
good reason for expecting to meet a man with his 
heart in his hand. Frankness begets frankness, just as 
naturally and just as certainly, under the proper condi- 
tions, as like produces like in the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms. There are men who do every thing by in- 
direction ; who meet one as warily as if words were 
traps; and pitfalls who manage a friendly interview as 
a general would manage a campaign ; and if they make 
their demonstration first, we are placed upon our guard. 



Reprodu&ion in Kind. 61 

We unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They 
plant distrust and secretiveness, and they produce in us 
after their kind. ~No man can be treated frankly in 
this world unless he himself be frank. If we would 
win confidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in 
others. The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that which 
stands before it. 

The young naturally take on the moods and accept 
and reflect the influences around them more readily 
than the old, just as a new piece of land will produce a 
better crop than one which is worn or pre-occupied. A 
virgin mind is like a virgin soil. It contains all the 
elements of fertility, and is adapted to the production 
of any crop. It has been exhausted in no department 
of its constitution. It is not occupied by roots, and 
shaded by foliage. It is not turf-bound and dry ; but 
it is soft and open, and clean and moist, and ready for 
the reception of any seed that may fall upon it. Until 
age brings individuality, the mind seems to have little 
choice as to what it will receive. Then, indeed, it does 
reject much seed that falls upon it, and much fails to 
take root because of the pre-occupation of the surface. 
A sensual seed is planted in the soul of a young man, 
and it springs up readily, and produces after its kind ; 
but the same seed tossed upon an older soil fails to 
sink and germinate, because the surface is pre-occupied, 
or, more frequently, because that peculiar element on 



62 Leffons in Life. 

which the germ must rely for quickening and sustenta- 
tion has been exhausted. Some manly or Christian 
grace falls upon a young mind, and quickly strikes root 
and rises into flower and fruit, while the same grace 
thrown upon an adult mind would fail to reach the soil, 
through the vices that cumber and choke it. It is thus 
that home and the school-room are literally seminaries 
— places where seed is sown — and it is in these that 
We expect and intend that every seed shall produce 
after its kind. Let us talk about this a little. 

I once heard a person say that one of his acquaint- 
ances, whom he named, had no moral right to have a 
child. Why was this harsh judgment uttered ? Be- 
cause he was hereditarily scrofulous, and would neces- 
sarily entail upon his offspring the family taint. If 
there were even a show of justice in this, what must 
be said of a parent who does not possess a single moral 
quality, that even he, in the selfishness of his parental 
love, would desire to see implanted in his child ? How 
many homes are scattered over Christendom in which 
no good seed is sown ! How many selfish, niggardly, 
vicious parents are there, who, producing after their 
kind, by generation and by influence, are filling the 
world with selfish, niggardly, and vicious children ! 
How many homes are there in which the gentle words 
of love are never heard ; in which the tender graces 
of a Christian heart are never unfolded; in which a 



Reproduction in Kind. 63 

prayer is never uttered ! How many fathers are there 
whose lips are black with profanity and foul with ob- 
scenity, and whose lives are mean and unwholesome ! 
How many mothers are there whose tongues are nimble 
with scandal and bitter with scolding, and whose brains 
are busy with vanities and jealousies ! Ah ! if there 
be any man or woman in this world who has no moral 
right to have a child, it is one who has not a single 
trait of character desirable to be reproduced in a 
child. Scrofula may be bad, but sin is worse. Bodily 
taint may be terrible, but spiritual taint is horrible. 

It is a general truth, under the law that every thing 
produces after its kind, that children become what 
their parents are. A simple people, virtuous and 
healthy, will produce virtuous, healthy, and true-heart- 
ed children. A luxurious people— lazy, sensual, waste- 
ful — will produce children like themselves. If we go 
through the vicious quarters of a great city, where 
licentiousness and drunkenness and beastly vices pre- 
vail, we shall find that though all die before old age, 
the communities are abundantly recruited by the chil- 
dren which they produce. Men, principles, habits, 
ideas, vices, all ha\-e children, whose features betray 
their parentage ; so that no parent has a right to ex- 
pect a child to be better than its father and mother. 
On the contrary, he has every reason to believe that 
every thing that a child sees wrong in the parents, will 



64 Leffons in Life. 

be imitated. There is no way by which bad parents can 
bring np a family well. There must be in the parental 
life good principles, a sweet and equable temper, a ten- 
der and loving disposition, a firm self-control, a pleas- 
ant deportment, and a conscientious devotion to duty, 
or these will not be found in the life of the children. 
Bad seed, sown in the quick soil of a child's mind, is 
sure to spring up, and to bear fruit after its kind. No 
sensible man ever dreams of gathering figs from this- 
tles, or grapes from bramble-bushes, and no man has 
the slightest right to suppose that he can bring up a 
family to be better than he is. The plant will be true 
to the seed. 

We are in the habit of hearing that the children 
of a certain neighborhood, or school, or town, are ex- 
traordinarily bad children. Great wonder is some- 
times expressed in regard to such instances, when, 
really, they are not wonderful at all. When children 
are unusually bad, parents are unusually bad, or, if 
they are not bad-hearted, they are wrong-headed. I 
ought, perhaps, to say here that I have known an iras- 
cible, tyrannical, unjust and cruel school-teacher to 
spoil a neighborhood of children, when the parents were 
without any special fault, save that of failing to thrust 
him out of the charge which he had abused. But usu- 
ally the fault is at home. If the seed planted there be 
good, it will produce good fruit. Yet my reader will 



Reprodu&ion in Kind. 65 

say that the best man he ever knew, had the worst 
children he ever saw. The truth of the statement is 
admitted, but what do you know of the home life of 
that family? How much unreasonable restraint has 
been exercised upon those children? From how many 
exhibitions of stern and unrelenting injustice have these 
children suffered? What laxity of discipline and care- 
lessness of culture have reigned in that family ? I know 
many who seem to be excellent men in society, but 
who are any thing but amiable men at home. In one 
they are pleasant, affable, kind, and charitable ; in the 
other, cross-grained, hard, unkind, and unjust. I de- 
clare with all positiveness, that when a family or a 
neighborhood of children is bad, there is a reason for 
it outside of the children. There are bad influences 
which descend upon them, and work out their natural 
results in them. 

It is astonishing to see how long a seed will lie in 
the ground without germinating, and how true it will 
remain to its kind through untold years. Cut down a 
pine forest, where an oak has not been seen for a cen- 
tury, and oak shrubbery will spring up. Heave out 
upon the surface a pile of earth that has lain hidden 
from the eyes of a dozen generations, and forthwith it 
will grow green with weeds. Plough up the prairie, 
and turn under the grass and flowers that have grown 
there since the white settler can remember, and there 



66 Leffons in Life. 



will spring from the inverted sod a strange growth 
that has had no representative in the sunlight for long 
ages. Soul and soil are alike in this. I once heard a 
man say of his father, who had been dead many years 
— " I hate him : I hate his memory." The words were 
spoken bitterly, with a flushed lace and angry eyes, 
yet he who spoke them was one of the kindest and 
most placable of men. Deep down in his heart, under 
love for his mother which was almost worship, and 
under affection for wife, children, and sisters which was 
as deep as his nature, and under multiplied friendships, 
there had been planted this seed. The father had 
treated the boy harshly and unjustly ; and the young 
soul was stung as the tender fruit is stung by an insect. 
Where anger and resentment were sown, anger and 
resentment were ready to spring up the moment the 
seed was uncovered. I have known men to carry 
through life a revenge planted in their hearts by some 
unjust and cruel schoolmaster. How many men are 
there are in the world who have sworn to revenge 
themselves upon one who had stung them with anger 
or injustice when in childhood! 

So we come to the grand lesson, that if we would 
have good children, we must ourselves be exactly what 
we would have them become ; if we would govern our 
families, we must first govern ourselves ; if we would 
have only pleasant words greet our ears in the home 



Reprodudion in Kind. 67 

circle, we must speak only pleasant words. We should 
see to it that we plant nothing, the legitimate fruits of 
which we shall not be willing and glad to see borne in 
the lives of our children. If our children are bad, the 
fault is, ninety-nine cases in a hundred, our own, in 
some way. If we would reform society, or make it 
better in any respect, our quickest way to do it is to 
reform and make ourselves better. If I would reap 
courtesy and hospitality and kindness and love, I must 
plant them ; and it is the sum of all arrogance to .as- 
sume that I have a right to reap them without plant- 
ing them. A man who receives courtesy without exer- 
cising it, reaps that which he has not sown. He is a 
thief, and ought in justice to be kicked out of society. 
Blessings on the man who sows the seeds of a happy 
nature and a noble character broadcast wherever his 
feet wander, — who has a smile alike for joy and sor- 
row, a tender word always for a child, a compassion- 
ate utterance for suffering, courtesy for friends and for 
strangers, encouragement for the despairing, an open 
heart for all — love for all — good words for all ! Such 
seed produces after its kind in all soils, when it finds 
lodgment; and that which the sower fails to reap, 
passes into hands that are grateful for the largess. 



LESSON V. 

TEUTH AND TKUTHFTILNESS. 

For truth is as impossible to be soiled, by any outward touch as a sunbeam." 

Milton. 

"Odds life ! must one swear to the truth of a song ? "—Matthew Prioe. 

" Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like 
A star new-born that drops into its place, 
And which, once circling in its placid round, 
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake." — Lowell. 

OKE of the rarest powers possessed by man is the 
power to state a fact. It seems a very simple thing 
to tell the truth, but, beyond all question, there is noth- 
ing half so easy as lying. To comprehend a fact in its 
exact length, breadth, relations, and significance, and 
to state it in language that shall represent it with 
exact fidelity, are the work of a mind singularly gifted, 
finely balanced, and thoroughly practiced in that special 
department of effort. The greatness of Daniel Webster 
was more apparent in his power to state a fact, or to 



Truth and Truthfulnefs. 69 

present a truth, than in any other characteristic of his 
gigantic nature. It was the power of truth that won 
for him his forensic victories. Whenever he was truest 
to truth, then was truth truest to him. He was a man 
who implicitly believed in the power of truth to take 
care of itself when it had been fairly presented ; and 
the failures of his life always grew out of his attempts 
to* make falsehood look like truth — a field of effort in 
which the most gifted of his cotemporaries won the 
most brilliant of his triumphs. 

The men are comparatively few who are in the 
habit of telling the truth. We all lie, every day of 
our lives — almost in every sentence we utter — not con- 
sciously and criminally, perhaps, but really, in that our 
language fails to represent truth, and state facts cor- 
rectly. Our truths' are half-truths, or distorted truths, 
or exaggerated truths, or sophisticated truths. Much 
of this is owing to carelessness, much to habit, and, 
more than has generally been supposed, to mental inca- 
pacity. I have known eminent men who had not the 
power to state a fact, in its whole volume and outline, 
because, first, they could not comprehend it perfectly, 
and, second, because their power of expression was 
limited. The lenses by which they apprehended their 
facts were not adjusted properly, so they saw every 
thing with a blur. Definite outlines, cleanly cut edges, 
exact apprehension of volume and weight, nice meas- 



70 Leffons in Life. 

; . . . _, 

! urement of relations, were matters outside of their 
observation and experience. They had broad minds, 
but bungling ; and their language was no better than 
their apprehensions — usually it was worse, because lan- 
guage is rarely as definite as apprehension. Men rarely 
do their work to suit them, because their tools are 
imperfect. 

There are men in all communities who are believed 
to be honest, yet whose word is never taken as author- 

i ity upon any subject. There is a flaw or a warp some- 
where in their perceptions, which prevents them from 
receiving truthful impressions. Every thing comes to 
them distorted, as natural objects are distorted by 
reaching the eye through wrinkled window-glass. Some 
are able to apprehend a fact and state it correctly, if it 
have no direct relation to themselves ; but the moment 
their personality, or their personal interest, is involved, 
the fact assumes false proportions and false colors. I 
know a physician whose patients are always alarmingly 
sick when he is first called to them. As they usually get 
well, I am bound to believe that he is a good physician ; 
but I am not bound to believe that they are all as sick at 
beginning as he supposes them to be. The first violent 
symptoms operate upon his imagination and excite his 
fears, and his opinion as to the degree of danger attaching 
to the diseases of his patients is not worth half so much 
as that of any sensible old nurse. In fact, nobody thinks 



Truth and Truthfulnefs. 71 

of taking it all ; and those who know him, and who 
hear his sad representations of the condition of his 
patients, show equal distrust of his word and faith in 
his skill, by taking it for granted that they are in a fair 
way to get well. 

It is impossible for bigots, for men of one idea, for 
fanatics, for those who set boundaries to themselves in 
religious, social, and political creeds, for men who think 
more of their own selfish interests than they do of 
truth, and for vicious men, to speak the truth. We 
are all, I suppose, bigots to a greater or less extent. 
We all have a creed written in our minds, or printed 
in our books ; and to this we are more or less blindly 
attached. We set down an article of faith, or adopt 
an opinion, and nothing is allowed to interfere with it. 
If a sturdy fact comes along, and asks admission, we 
turn to our creed to see if we can safely entertain it. 
If the creed says " No," we say " No," and the fact is 
turned out of doors, and misrepresented after it is gone. 
Our creeds are our dwellings. They come next to us, 
and nothing can come to us, or go out from us, without 
going through our creeds. The simple fact of the 
death of Jesus Christ upon the cross, reaching the 
mind through various creeds, and passing out again, 
goes through as many phases as there are creeds, rang- 
ing through a scale which at one extreme presents a 
God dying to redeem the lost millions of a world, 



72 Leffons in Life. 

and, at the other, a benevolent, sweet-tempered man, 
yielding his life in testimony of the honesty of his 
teachings. 

No new truth presents itselt, which does not have 
to run the gauntlet of our creeds. If it get through 
alive, and seem disposed to be peaceable, and to remain 
subordinate to them, then we let it live, and receive 
it into respectable society ; — otherwise, we en'treat it 
shamefully. Sometimes the truth is too much for us, 
and asserts its power to stand without our help, and 
then we compromise with it. The world will turn on 
its axis, and wheel around its orbit, though we stop 
the mouth of the profane wretch who declares it ; so, 
after a while, we get tired of fighting the fact, and 
shape our creeds accordingly. We fight the sturdy 
truths of geology, because they interfere with our 
creeds, but after awhile the sturdy truths of geology 
become too sturdy for us, and then we begin to patron- 
ize them, and to confer upon them the honor of har- 
monizing with our creeds. A man who has adopted 
the creed of a materialist, is entirely incompetent to 
receive, entertain, and represent a spiritual fact. My 
creed is the window at which I sit, and look at all the 
world of truth outside of me. All truth is tinted by 
the medium through which it passes to reach my mind ; 
and such is my imperfection and my weakness, that I 
could not raise my window immediately, and place my 



Truth and Truthfulnefs. 73 

soul in direct, vital contact with the great atmosphere 
of truth, if I would. 

But if bigotry be such a bar to the correct percep- 
tion of truth, what shall be said of self-interest and 
personal vices of appetite and passion ? It is possible 
for no man who owns a slave and finds profit in such 
ownership, to receive the truth touching the right of man 
to himself, and the moral wrong of slavery. We have 
too much evidence that even creeds must bend to self- 
interest, and that any traffic will be regarded as morally 
right which is pecuniarily profitable. Once, in the 
creed of the slaveholders, slavery was admitted to be 
wrong, but that was when it was looked upon as tem- 
porary in its character, and, on the whole, evil in its 
results to all concerned. Now, when it is sought to 
be made a permanent institution, because it seems to 
be the only source of the wealth of a section, it has 
become right ; and even the slave-trade logically falls 
into the category of laudable and legitimate commerce. 
It is impossible for a people who have allowed pe- 
cuniary interest to deprave their moral sense to this 
extent, to perceive and receive any sound political 
truth, or to apprehend the spirit and temper of those 
who are opposed to them. The same may be said of 
the liquor traffic. The act of selling liquor is looked 
upon with horror by those who stand outside, and who 
have an eye upon its consequences ; but the seller deems 
4 



74 Leffons in Life. 

it legitimate, and looks upon any interference with his 
sales as an infringement of his rights. Our selfish inter- 
est in any business, or in any scheme of profit, distorts 
all truth either directly or indirectly related to such 
business or scheme, or living in its region and atmos- 
phere. The President of the United States, or the 
governor of the commonwealth, may be an excellent 
man ; but if I want an office, and he fails to appoint me 
to it, why I don't exactly regard him as such. He 
becomes to me a very ordinary and vulgar sort of man 
indeed ; but if he give me my office, then, though he 
may be all that his enemies think him, he seems to me 
to' be invested with a singular nobility of character 
that other people do not apprehend at all. 

The vices of humanity are sad media through which 
to receive truth — often so opaque that no truth can 
reach the mind at all. It is impossible for a man whose 
affections are bestialized, whose practices are libertine, 
and whose imaginations are all impure, to receive the 
truth that there are such things as purity and virtue, 
and that there are men and women around him who 
are virtuous and pure. There is no truth which per- 
sonal vice will not distort. The approaches to a sen- 
sual mind are through the senses, and the same may be 
said of all minds in a general way ; but the approaches 
to a sensual mind are only through the senses, and 
they, being perverted, abused, exhausted, or unduly ex- 



Truth and Truthfulnefs. 75 

cited, furnish the utterly unreliable avenues by which 
truth reaches the soul. The grand reason why truth, 
published from the pulpit and the platform, revealed in 
periodicals and books, and embodied in pictures and 
statues, works no greater changes upon the minds and 
morals of men, is, that it never gets inside of men in 
the shape in which it is uttered. It passes through 
such media of bigotry, or self-interest, or vice, that its 
identity and power are lost. 

It is not, therefore, remarkable that so little truth 
is told when so little is received — that so little is ex- 
pressed when so little is apprehended. The largest 
field will not produce an oat-straw that will stand alone, 
if there be no silica in the soil, and the largest mind 
cannot express a pure truth if it has lived always so 
encased that pure truth could not find its way into it. 
All truth reaches our minds through various media, by 
which it is more or less colored and refracted ; and it 
is very rare that a man has the power to embody in 
language and utter a truth in the degree of perfection 
in which' he received it. As I said at beginning, the 
power to state a facf correctly, or to express a pure 
truth, is among the rarest gifts of man. It never 
struck me that David was remarkably hasty, when 
he said that all men were liars. All men are liars, 
in one respect or another. They are divisible into 
various classes, which may legitimately be mentioned 



76 



Leffons in Life. 



under two heads, viz., unconscious liars and conscious 
liars. 

Of those who lie, and suppose they are telling the 
truth, I have already spoken. They are a large and 
most respectable class of people, and their apology 
must be found in the theory I have advanced ; yet 
among these may be found men and women who will 
require all the amplitude of our mantles of charity to 
cover them. I have been much impressed with a pas- 
sage in Dr. Bushnell's recent volume, entitled u Chris- 
tian Nurture," which incidentally touches upon this 
subject, in the writer's characteristically powerful way; 
and as I cannot condense it, I will copy it : 

"There is, in some persons who appear in all other respects to be 
Christian, a strange defect of truth, or truthfulness. They are not 
conscious of it. They would take it as a cruel injustice were they 
only to suspect their acquaintances of holding such an estimate of 
them. And yet, there is a want of truth in every sort of demonstra- 
tion they make. It is not their words only that lie, but their voice, 
air, action ; their every putting forth has a lying character. The 
atmosphere they live in is an atmosphere of pretence. Their virtues 
are affectations. Their compassions and sympathies are the airs they 
put on. Their friendship is their mood, and nothing more ; and yet 
they do not know it. They mean, it may be, no fraud. They only cheat 
themselves so effectually as to believe that what they are only acting 
is their truth. And, what is difficult to reconcile, they have a great 
many Christian sentiments ; they maintain prayer as a habit, and will 
sometimes speak intelligently of matters of Christian experience." 

It was the oracular sage, Deacon Bedott, who, in 
view of the imperfections of his kind, remarked several 



Truth and Truthfulnefs. 77 

times in his life : " we are all poor creeturs " — a re- 
mark that comes as near to being pure truth as any we 
meet with outside of the Bible and the standard trea- 
tises on mathematics. We are, indeed, poor creatures. 
Our highest conceptions of truth are contemptible, our 
best utterances fall short of our conceptions, and our 
lives are poorer than our language. 

Of all conscious and criminal lying, I know of none 
that exceeds in malignity and magnitude that of a po- 
litical campaign. In such a struggle, men get in love 
with lies. They seek apologies for the circulation of 
lies. They hug lies to their hearts in preference to 
truth. It is the habit of hopeful philosophers to enlarge 
upon the benefit to our people of the annual and quad- 
rennial contests for place, which occur in our country, 
as if principles were the things really at stake, and per- 
sonalities were out of the question, as the lying poli- 
ticians would have us believe. What, in honesty, can 
be said of the leading speakers and the leading presses 
which sustain a party in a contest for power, but that 
they studiously misrepresent their opponents, misstate 
their own motives, give currency to false accusations, 
suppress truth that tells against them, exaggerate the 
importance of that which favors them, seize upon all 
plausible pretexts for fraud, skulk behind subterfuges, 
and lie outright when it is deemed necessary. And 
what can be expected more and better than this, when 



78 Lefibns in Life. 

the leaders are office-seekers, who live and thrive on 
the grand basilar lie that the motive which inspires all 
their action is a regard for the popular good? Of 
course I speak generally. There are politicians and 
presses that are above personal considerations ; but 
even these become infected with the prevalent poison 
of falsehood that is everywhere associated with their 
efforts. 

The social lying of the world has found multitudi- 
nous satirists, and furnished the staple of a whole school 
of writers. We touch our hats in token of respect to 
men whom in our hearts we despise. We inquire ten- 
derly for the health of persons for whom we do not 
care a straw. We who cannot afford it wear expensive 
clothing, and display grand equipage, and give costly 
entertainments, not because we enjoy it, but because 
we wish to impress upon the world the belief that we 
can afford it. It is our way of expressing a lie which 
seems to us important to the maintenance of our social 
standing. We receive with a kiss a visitor whom we 
wish were in Greenland, and betray her to the next who 
comes in. We pretend to ourselves and our neighbors 
that there is nothing which we so much esteem as the 
simple friendships of life, and the straight-forward love 
and hearty good will of the honest hearts around us, 
yet when the rich and the titled are near, we are glad- 
dened and nattered, and look with supercilious con- 



Truth and Truthfulnefs, 79 

tempt upon the humble friendships which we affected 
to cherish supremely. In our conscience and judgment, 
we appreciate the genuine values of social life, and we 
profess in our language to hold them in j ust estimation, 
but in our life and practice we honor that which is fic- 
titious and conventional, apprehending in our conscience 
and judgment that we are acting a he. Socially I can- 
not but believe that there is far more of truthfulness in 
humble than in high life. The more nearly we come 
down to hearty nature, and the further we go from the 
artificial and conventional, the nearer do we come to 
truth. Truth is indeed at the bottom of this well, and 
not in the artificial wall that rises above it, nor the 
buckets that go up and down as caprice or selfishness 
turns the windlass. 

Business lying is, after all, the most universal of 
any. It is confined to no age and no nation. Solomon 
understood the world's great game when he wrote : 
" It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer : but when 
he is gone his way, then he boasteth ; » and from Solo- 
mon's day down to ours, buyers have depreciated that 
which they would purchase, and then boasted of their 
bargains. When two selfish persons meet on opposite 
sides of a counter, there rises between them a sort of 
antagonism. One is interested in selling an article of 
merchandise at the highest practicable profit, and the 
other is interested in obtaining it at the lowest possible 



80 Leffons in Life. 

price. Of the small, cunning lies that pass back and 
forth over that counter, of the half-truths told, and the 
whole truths suppressed, of deceptions touching the 
quality of goods on one side and the ability to buy on 
the other, it would be humiliating to tell. If every lie 
told in the shops, across mahogany and show-case, by 
buyers and sellers, were nailed like base coin to the 
counter, there would be no room for the display of 
goods. It is considered no mean compliment to a busi- 
ness man to say that he is sharp at a bargain ; yet this 
sharpness is rarely more than the faculty of ingenious 
lying. A man who sells to me an article worth only 
five dollars for twice that sum is a u a sharp man ; " 
but he cannot make such a sale to me without telling 
me, in some way, a lie. The price he puts upon his 
merchandise is a lie, essentially, in itself. 

There is a great deal of business lying that by long 
habit becomes unconscious. If we take up a news- 
paper, we shall find that quite a number of the stores 
around us, kept by our excellent friends, have " the 
largest and finest stock of goods ever displayed in the 
city." We shall find that they have been selling 
for years at " unprecedentedly low prices," that they 
are " selling at less than cost," that they are pushing 
off goods at rates " ruinously low," and that they can 
offer bargains to buyers that will confound their com- 
petitors. I suppose that none of these advertisers think 



Truth and Truthfulnefs. 81 

they are lying, or, if they do, that their lying is of a 
harmful character. Lying in this way is supposed to 
be part of the legitimate machinery of trade. Promis- 
ing definitely to finish work without the expectation 
of keeping the promise, or being able to keep it, is an- 
other kind of half unconscious lying. There are men 
engaged in various trades, in all communities, whose 
word is of no more value, when in the form of a promise 
to finish within a certain period a certain piece of work, 
than the fly-leaf of a last year's almanac. There are 
men whom every one knows who will lie without blush- 
ing about their work, and who will stand at their coun- 
ter and lie all day, and then sleep with a peaceful 
conscience at night, having failed to fulfil a single 
pledge during their waking hours. Then there are 
people who will promise to pay bills, and promise a 
hundred times over, and never pay, and never expect 
to pay. When a bill is presented, they promise to 
pay, as a matter of course ; and that is considered as 
good as the gold, until it is presented again ; and then 
comes another promise, and another and another. 
The creditor knows the debtor lies, but many a debtor 
of this kind would feel insulted and injured by any 
spoken doubts of his truthfulness. 

But the field is large, and I am already beyond the 
limits which I set for myself in these essays. It will 

be seen that I regard truthfulness as, on the whole, a 

4* 



82 LefTons in Life. 

rare article in this world. It is in some respects neces- 
sarily so. Many men are incapable of stating a fact or 
telling a truth. They have not the power to compre- 
hend or express either. The majority of men receive 
truth through such media of prejudice, selfishness, 
bigotry, sensuality, and the like, that they never get it 
pure, and are therefore incapable of uttering it cor- 
rectly, even when their power' of expression equals their 
power of perception, which is not commonly the case. 
So there is a world of unconscious lying ; but I am 
sorry to believe that there is just as large a world of 
conscious lying. In politics, society, and business, the 
conscious and intentional lie abounds. " Lord ! how 
this world is given to lying ! " 

Well, all this can be improved. Men can cultivate 
the power to apprehend and express truth. They can 
cast off the prejudice, selfishness, bigotry, and sensuality 
that prevent them from receiving truth. They can re- 
frain from conscious lying ; and no one doubts that the 
world would be greatly improved by honest efforts 
directed to these ends. Only the naked soul, in Eter- 
nity's white light, can be wholly truthful ; but we can 
all try for it, and we shall find our highest account in 
trying. 



LESSON VI. 

MISTAKES OF PENANCE. 

" For of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form and doth the body make. 1 ' 

Spensek. 

" Can sackcloth clothe a fault or hide a shame? 
Or do thy hands make Heaven a recompense, 
By strewing dust upon thy briny face ? 
No ! though thou pine thyself with willing want, 
Or face look thin, or carcass ne'er so gaunt ; 
Such holy madness God rejects and loathes 
That sinks no deeper than the skin or clothes." 

QlJAKLES. 

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty. 1 ' 

Keats. 

I HAVE every reason to believe that God loves 
Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. I 
do not see how He can ; but perhaps this is not a com- 
petent reason to offer in the premises. I saw a wagon- 
load of what I supposed to be Shakers of both sexes, 
riding along the street, the other day ; and I wondered 
what I should think of them if I had made them. I 



84 Leflfons in Life. 

think I should have been about equally vexed and 
amused to see the lines that I had made beautiful, dis- 
guised, and every grace-giving swell of linib and bust, 
upon which I had exercised such exquisite toil, care- 
fully hidden. They sat up very straight and prim, in 
a very square wagon, behind a square-trotting horse, 
driven by " right lines " in a pair of hands that seemed 
to grow out of the driver's stomach, while his elevated, 
rectangular elbows cut rigidly against the air on either 
side. It was a vision for a painter — a house painter — 
" a painter by trade." The long-haired, meek-looking 
men, with their flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hats, 
straight coats and neutral colors, and the women with 
their sugar-scoop bonnets, white kerchiefs and straight 
waists, looked like a case of faded wax-figures, in prison 
uniform, that had " come down to us from a former 
generation." 

I heaved a sigh as the wagon-load of mortified and 
badly-dressed flesh passed out of sight, and wondered 
if the souls inside of those bodies were as angular as 
their covering. I did not believe it — I do not believe 
it. I have no doubt that underneath those straight 
waistcoats hearts have throbbed at the sight of woman 
and child, and longed for home and family life, with 
yearnings that could not be uttered. Those straight- 
laced sensibilities have been thrilled by beauty, and 
bathed in the grace and glory of the life around them. 



Miftakes of Penance. 85 

Trees have whispered to them, flowers have looked up 
and rebuked them, brooks have called to them with 
laughter, rivers have smiled upon them in sunshine, the 
great sky has bent over them with infinite tenderness 
and fulness of beauty, and they have felt what they 
could not define. It was something very wrong, they 
supposed, and so they buttoned their straight jackets 
around them, turned their eyes away from beholding 
vanity, and thought they had done an excellent thing. 
I know that those young women, Avith their abomina- 
ble clothing outside, and their crushed and abused 
sympathies inside, are unhappy, unless they have all 
been mercifully transformed into fanatics. It is use- 
less to tell me that a man can ignore or trample to 
death the strongest passion of his nature — the strong- 
est, the purest, and the most ennobling — and be a 
happy man. It is useless to say that a man or woman 
can walk through a world of beauty — themselves the 
most beautiful of all things — and bind themselves up 
in unbecoming drapery, and smother all their im- 
pulses to express the beauty with which God inspires 
them, and do it with content and satisfaction. It can- 
not be done. 

So, when this wagon-load of Shakers drove out of 
sight, I heaved a sigh, for I knew that not to be un- 
happy in the life which was typefied in their dress and 
establishment, would be a greater misfortune, essen- 



86 Leffons in Life. 

tially, than dissatisfaction and discontent would be. If 
they were happy in their life, they must have become 
perverted in their natures, or indurated beyond the 
susceptibility to receive the impressions of healthy men 
and women. If God ever put any thing majestic and 
noble into a man, and gave him a fitting frame for it, 
Pie never intended that it should be hidden in a meal- 
bag, or permanently quenched under a smock-frock. In 
the infinite variety which he has introduced into hu- 
man character and into human forms and faces, there 
is no warrant for dressing men in uniform, but a most 
emphatic protest against it. If God made woman 
beautiful, He made her so to be looked at — to give 
pleasure to the eyes which rest upon her — and she has 
no business to dress herself as if she were a hitching- 
post, or to transform that which should give delight to 
those among whom she moves, into a ludicrous carica- 
ture of a woman's form. 

I repeat that I have every reason to believe that 
God loves Shakers, but I do not think He admires 
them. If God admires the bodies He has made, 
He cannot admire them when they are covered 
by the Shaker dress, for it spoils the looks of them, 
and differs essentially from the plan which He pur- 
sues in draping all other forms of life. There is no 
grace about it, and no beauty of color. God admires 
clouds, I doubt not, when painted by the setting sun. 



Miftakes of Penance. 87 

and stars flashing in the heavens, and the flowers of 
myriad hues that are scattered over the earth, but if 
these are objects of His special admiration, as they are 
of ours, what can He think of a drab Shaker bonnet ? 
What can He think when man and woman, the glo- 
ry and crown of His creation, are entirely overtopped 
and thrown into the shade by birds and bees and blos- 
soms, and go poking around the world in unexampled 
and ingeniously contrived ugliness? What does He 
think of men and women who take that passion of love, 
which was intended to make them happy, and give 
them sweet companionship, and bear young children 
to their arms, and trample it under their feet as an un- 
holy thing, and to welcome to their hearts, in its stead, 
blackness, and darkness, and tempest ? What does He 
think of lives out of which are shut all meaning and all 
individuality, and all love and expression of beauty, and 
all vivifying, liberalizing, and humanizing experience ? 
I owe no grudge to the Shakers. I like their ap- 
ple-sauce, (they ask a thrifty price for it,) and have 
faith in the genuineness and the generation, under fa- 
vorable conditions, of their garden seeds ; but I object 
to their style of life and piety, and to every thing out- 
side of Shakerdom which looks like it. I object to this 
whole idea, (and the Shakers have not monopolized it,) 
that God takes delight in the voluntary personal mor- 
tification of His children, and that He approves of 



LeiTons in Life. 



their going about, sad-faced and straight-laced, stu- 
diously avoiding all temptation to enjoy themselves. 

I have seen a deacon in the pride of his deep hu- 
mility. He combed his hair straight, and looked stu- 
diously after the main chance ; and while he looked, 
he employed himself in setting a good example. His 
dress was rigidly plain, and his wife was not indulged 
in the vanities of millinery and mantua-making. He 
never joked. He did not know what a joke was, any 
further than to know that it was a sin. He carried a 
Sunday face through the week. He did not mingle in 
the happy social parties of his neighborhood. He was 
a deacon. He starved his social nature because he 
was a deacon. He refrained from all participation in 
a free and generous life because he was a deacon. He 
made his children hate Sunday because he was a dea- 
con. He so brought them up that they learned to 
consider themselves unfortunate in being the children 
of a deacon. They were pitied by other children be- 
cause they were the children of a deacon. His wife 
was pitied by other women because she was the wife 
of a deacon. Nobody loved him. If he came into a 
circle where men were laughing or telling stories, they 
always stopped until he went out. Nobody ever grasp- 
ed his hand cordially, or slapped him on the shoulder, 
or spoke of him as a good fellow. He seemed as dry 
and hard and tough as a piece of jerked beef. There 



Miftakes of Penance. 89 

was no softness of character — no juiciness — no loveli- 
ness in him. 

Now it is of no use for me to undertake to realize 
to myself that God admires such a character as this. 
I do not doubt that He loves the man, as He loves all 
men ; but to admire his style of manhood and piety is 
impossible for any intelligent being. It lacks the 
roundness and fulness, and richness and sweetness, that 
belong to a truly admirable character. Such a man 
caricatures Christianity, and scares other men away 
from it. Such a man ostentatiously presents him- 
self as one in whose life religion is dominant. It is 
religion that is supposed to rub down that long face, 
and inspire that stiff demeanor, and to make him at all 
points an unattractive and unlovable man. Of course 
it is not religion that does any thing of the kind, but 
it has the credit of it with the world, and the world 
does not like it. It looks around, and sees a great 
many men who do not pretend to religion at all, and 
yet who are very lovable men. If religion can trans- 
form a pleasant man into a most unpleasant one, and 
change a free, bright, and happy home into a dismal 
place of slavery, and blot out a man's aesthetic and so- 
cial nature, the world naturally thinks that getting re- 
ligion would be almost as much of a misfortune as get- 
ting some melancholy chronic disease, and I do not 
blame it. It is not to be wondered at that the world 



r 



90 Leflbns in Life. 

should mistake, very much, the true nature of Chris- 
tianity, when Christians themselves entertain such griev- 
ous errors about it. 

I suppose God is attracted to very much the same 
style of character that men are. Christ loved a 
young man at first sight, who lacked the very thing 
essential to his highest manhood. But He loved the 
kind of man He saw before Him. He was upright, 
frank-hearted, open-minded, and bright; and "Jesus 
beholding him, loved him." There are men whom one 
cannot help loving and admiring though they lack a 
great many things — things very "needful" to make 
them perfect men. Now I put it to good, conscien- 
tious, Christian men and women, whether they do not 
take more pleasure in the society of a warm-hearted, 
generous, chivalrous, well-fed, man of the world, than 
in the society of any of that class of Christians of whom 
the deacon I have mentioned is a type. I know they 
do, and they cannot help it. There is more of that which 
belongs to a first-class Christian character in the for- 
mer than in the latter, and if I were called upon to test 
the two men by commanding them respectively to sell 
what they have and give to the poor, I should be dis- 
appointed were the deacon to behave the best. A char- 
acter which religion does not fructify — does not soften, 
enlarge, beautify, and enrich — is not benefited by relig- 
ion — or, rather, has not possessed itself of religion. God 



Miftakes of Penance. 91 

loves that which is beautiful and attractive in charac- 
ter, just as much as we do, and it makes no difference 
where he sees it. He does not dislike the amiable 
traits of a sinner because he is a sinner, nor does he 
admire those traits of a Christian which we feel to be 
contemptible, simply because they belong to a Chris- 
tian. A Christian sucked dry of his humanity, is as 
juiceless and as flavorless as a sucked orange, and I 
believe that God regards him in the same light that 
we do. He will save such I doubt not, for their faith ; 
and, in the coming world, they will learn what they do 
not know here ; but the question whether they are as 
well worth saving as some of their neighbors, may, I 
think, be legitimately entertained. In saying this, I 
mean to be neither light or irreverent. I mean simply 
to indicate that some men are worth a great deal more 
to themselves and to their fellows than others. 

So, when I look, abroad upon the world, and see 
men shaving their heads, and wearing nasty hair shirts, 
and shutting themselves up in cells, and living lives of 
celibacy, and when I see women retiring from the 
world which they were sent to adorn, populate, and 
bless, and Shakers driving around in square wagons 
and studiously ugly garments, and Christians who 
should know better abandoning all the bright and 
cheerful things of life, and feeling that there is merit 
in mortification, I cannot but feel that God looks down 



92 LelTons in Life. 

upon it all with sadness and pity. After doing every 
thing in His power to make His children happy — after 
filling the world with good things for their use, and 
giving them abundant faculties for enjoying them — after 
endowing them with beauty, and a sense of that which 
is beautiful — it must be sad to Him to see them wander- 
ing about in strange disguises, hugging to their half- 
rebellious hearts the awful mistake that, however much 
they may suffer, they are gaining favor thereby in the 
sight of their Maker. Of course, I believe in self- 
denial, and in the nobility of self-denial, for the good 
of others; but I believe that all self-denial that par- 
takes of the character of penance, in whatever form 
and under whatever circumstances it may develop it- 
self, is always a thing of mischief, and always a thing 
of error. It has its basis in the miserable theory that 
there is something in the passions and appetites with 
which God has constituted man that is essentially bad 
— a theory as impious as it is injurious — as fatal to all 
just conceptions of the divine Being and of man's re- 
lations to Him, as to all human happiness. 

Every thing which is truly admirable is good, 
and good and desirable in the degree by which it is 
admirable. A beautiful face and form are admirable, 
and just as good as they are admirable — just as good 
in their element of beauty. They are good for that 
quality, and in that quality, which excites our admira- 



Miftakes of Penance. 93 

tion. A beautiful bonnet, a beautiful dress, a beautiful 
brooch or necklace, are all admirable, and good because 
they are admirable, or good because every thing admira* 
ble is necessarily good. A family over which the father 
presides with tender dignity, and in which the mother 
moves with love's divinest ministry — where the faces 
of innocent children are shining, while their voices 
make music sweeter than the morning songs of birds — 
is admirable, and it is good in all those respects which 
make it admirable. A well-dressed man or woman is 
admirable, and that thing is good in itself which makes 
them so. A man who carries his heart in his hand, 
who deals both justly and generously by men, who 
bears a sunny face and pleasant words into society, 
whose cultured mind enriches freely all with whom it 
is brought into relation, who has abundant charity for 
the weak and erring, and who takes life and what it 
brings him contentedly, is an admirable man, and good 
in all the points which make him admirable. A house 
that presents a harmonious and handsome interior to 
the eye of the passenger, and whose exterior combines 
equal convenience and elegance, is admirable, and, by 
that token, good. 

Now these very simple propositions have their 
correlatives, which it is not necessary to set down in 
order, any further than fairly to illustrate my point. 
Things that are not admirable are not good. If the 



94 Leffons in Life. 



dress of a Shaker is not admirable, it is not good. If 
that sort of life which is led in a cloister, by monks or 
nuns, is not admirable, it is not good. If a man who 
professes to be a Christian lives a life out of which is 
shut all with which an unsophisticated humanity sym- 
pathizes — a life barren of attractive fruit — a life bare in 
all its surroundings — a life with no genial outflow and 
expression — a life of niggardly negatives rather than of 
generous positives — then that life is not admirable, and 
if it be not admirable it cannot be good in those respects. 
A man may carry along with such a life as this a spotless 
conscience and a strict devotion to apprehended duty, 
and these may be admirable and good, but the other 
characteristics cannot be either ; and however much God 
may approve his honest heart and honest endeavor, He 
cannot admire the style of manhood in which they have 
their dull and difficult illustration. The idea that I 
wish definitely to convey is this : that on the basis of a 
right heart, God would have us build up a bright, gen- 
erous, genial, expressive Christian character, and use 
gratefully and gladly all those things which He has 
prepared to make life cheerful and admirable. I believe 
a saint ought to have a better tailor than a sinner, and 
be in all manly ways a better fellow. I believe a true 
Christian should be in every thing that constitutes and 
belongs to a man the most admirable man in the world. 
I have an idea that God looks with the same kind 



Miftakes of Penance. 95 

of contempt on the prominent characteristics of certain 
styles of Christian men and women, that men of the 
world do. There is nothing admirable in cant and 
whine, and nasal psalm-singing, and men whose hearts 
are livers and whose blood is bile ; and I cannot be- 
lieve that He blames people for not admiring them, 
and not being attracted to them. I do not believe 
that an admirable Christian life is repulsive to the men 
of the world. I believe that wherever the human mind 
recognizes a rounded, chastened, rich, and outspoken 
Christian character, whether it belong to manhood or 
womanhood, it admires it, and feels attracted to it, by 
the degree in which it admires it. I believe, moreover, 
that the Christianity which discards as vanities those 
things which God has provided for the pleasure of His 
children, and mortifies the love of beauty, and adopts 
the theory that God is pleased with penance, and de- 
grades, abuses, and traduces the body to win greater 
sanctity of soul, and finds a sin in every sweet of sense, 
is a bastard Christianity. God is not the God of the 
dead, but of the living. 



LESSON VII. 

THE EIGHTS OF WOMAN. 

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
Are sweeter ; therefore ye soft pipes play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, 
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tones." 

John Keats. 

"I am as free as Nature first made man." 

Dbyden. 

" "What she wills to do or say 
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." 

Milton: 

was the sarcastic remark of a crusty old parson 
of Connecticut that woman has the undoubted 
right to shave and sing bass, if she chooses to do so. I 
question the right of bearded man to shave himself, 
and I will not concede that woman has a superior right, 
based on inferior necessities ; but believing that man 
has an undoubted right to sing bass, I am inclined to 
accord the same right to woman. "Woman is a female 



The Rights of Woman. 97 

man, and there is no reason that I know of why she 
should not have the same rights, precisely, that a male 
man has. I claim for myself, and for man, the privi- 
lege of singing treble, under certain circumstances ; 
and why should I not accord to woman the right to 
sing bass ? The brave old chorals of Germany would 
hardly be sung with much effect were the airs denied 
to the masculine voice, yet if it be man's prerogative 
to sing bass, it is surely woman's to sing treble. If it 
be usurpation for her to grope among the gutturals of 
the masculine clef, it is gross presumption for him to 
attempt to leap the five-rail fence that stands between 
him and high C. I put this consideration forward for 
the purpose of stopping every caviller's mouth upon 
the subject, until I present arguments of a broader 
and more comprehensive character, in support of 
woman's rio-ht to sins: bass. 

It is claimed by those who deny woman's right to 
sing bass that she is needed for the treble and alto 
parts. Needed by whom ? Needed by man ? But 
who gave man the right to set up his needs as the law 
of woman's life ? If man needs treble and alto, I hope 
he may get them. He has the undoubted right to sing 
both parts to suit his own fancy, or to hire others to do 
it for him. Man needs buttons on his shirts, and clean 
linen, but for the life of me I cannot see why that need 
defines a woman's duty in any respect. Let him do his 



Leffons in Life. 



own washing, and sew on his own buttons. Suppose 
a woman should need to have hooks and eyes sewed 
upon her dress, as some of them do, sometimes, after 
taking a very long breath, would that determine it to 
be man's duty to sew them on ? " It is a poor rule 
that will not work both ways." This is one of the il- 
lustrations of man's selfishness — that he sets up his 
needs as the rule by which the rights of one-half of 
the human race are to be determined. 

This same selfishness of man will demand that I 
reconsider this talk, and will accuse me of sophistry. 
It will declare that I do not state the case fairly. It 
will say that woman needs money with which to buy 
her dresses and procure her food, and strong hands to 
labor for her and protect her, and that these needs do 
indeed define man's duty with respect to her. But I 
place all this on the ground of gallantry and humanity. 
Of course, we are all very glad to do these things, you 
know, — we who have human feelings — but woman has 
no right to them, based upon her need — particularly if 
she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her inde- 
feasible right to sing bass. I know that it helps things 
along for a woman to look after a man's linen and but- 
tons, and do his fine work generally, because she seems 
to have a kind of natural knack at the business. I am 
aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a woman 
sing treble, if she sings it well, but I am talking, be it 



The Rights of Woman. 99 

remembered, of woman's right to sing bass. Let us 
stick to the question. 

The enemies of this -highest among the rights of 
woman are fond of alluding to the fact that only here 
and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail 
herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the 
work of singing bass. The large majority of women 
prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate 
views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what 
has this fact to do with the matter of right in the 
premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without 
.onions, but I never knew that fact to be brought for- 
ward as an argument against the right of a man to eat 
it with onions. It is possible, indeed, that if people were 
more accustomed to eating beef-steak with onions, or 
those savory vegetables were less objectionable in their 
style of perfume, there would be a majority in favor 
of the associated luxuries. We must remember, too, in 
considering this aspect of the question, that woman is, 
to a certain extent, a creature of whims. She is ex- 
ceedingly apt to adopt a practice because it is fashiona- 
ble. If it were fashionable for woman to sing bass, how 
long would it be before the lower tones would find full 
development ? And how long would it be before the 
men themselves would repeat those words of the immor- 
tal bard : — 

"Pier voice was ever soft, 
Gentle and low. — An excellent thing in woman"? 



100 Leffons in Life. 

After all, this sort of argument against woman's 
right to sing bass answers itself. If the preference of 
women generally for the soprano and alto be a good 
reason for their confining themselves to the performance 
of those parts, then a change of preference would be a 
valid reason for their leaving them. If individual right 
goes with general preference, then the pillars of the 
universe are uprooted, or we have no pillars worth 
mentioning. I suppose that women generally prefer 
in-door to out-of-door employments — labor that draws 
less upon muscle, and more upon ingenuity and deli- 
cate-fingered facility ; but that settles nothing as to 
their right to engage in muscular toils in the open air. 
The German peasant-woman has labored out-of-doors 
for many generations. The result has been the gradual 
approach to each other of her hips and shoulders, the 
extinguishment of that portion of her person known 
as the waist, and some noticeable flatness over the cere- 
bral organs ; but the German peasant-woman has her 
right, and that is worth any sacrifice, you know. If 
she prefers hoeing cabbages to spinning flax, who shall 
hinder her ? If all women should prefer hoeing cab- 
bages to spinning flax, or any variety of yarn, who 
shall hinder them? So far as man is concerned, 
woman has a right to grow her shoulders just as near 
her hips, and wear a head as flat as she pleases. In 
short, the general preference of women with respect to 



The Rights of Woman. 101 

any thing decides no question of individual right, what- 
ever. 

I will not admit that the general preference of 
women for private life imposes any obligation upon any 
woman to abstain from public life, or affects in any way 
her right to enter upon public life. I am aware that one 
would not like to have one's wife or sister an opera-singer, 
or a public dancer, or a preacher, or a doctor in gene- 
ral practice, or a circus-rider, or a popular lecturer, or 
an actress ; but I am talking about the question of 
right. Most women would shrink from war — from its 
fatigues, its dangers, its bloody strife ; but Joan of Arc 
asserted her right to go into war ; and her name is 
engrossed upon the scroll of fame. All women have 
the same right to go to war that she had. I confess 
that I should like to see a regiment of women six feet 
high, officered by women, all dressed in Balmorals il- 
lustrating the national colors, marching to battle in as 
close order as the peculiarity of their garments would 
permit, and accompanied by a corps of cavalry in side- 
saddles. Such an assertion of woman's right would be 
grand beyond description. I should not care to live 
on very intimate terms with the colonel of the regi- 
ment, but I don't know as that has any thing to do with 
this question. 

I was talking, however, about the right of women 
to sing bass, and must go on. It is declared by those 



102 Leffons in Life. 

who oppose this right that woman has no natural organs 
and aptitudes for bass. This is the strong-point of the 
enemy, but it amounts to nothing. If woman fails, 
apparently, in organs and aptitudes for this part, it only 
shows what long years of abuse will accomplish. Let 
us never forget in this discussion that woman is only 
a female man, that there is no such thing as " sex of 
soul," and that woman's vocal organs are built exactly 
like man's — as much like man's as her hands and her 
feet and her head are like his — a little smaller, perhaps, 
— that's all. It is a familiar fact, I presume, that the 
little colts born of South American dams take to am- 
bling as their natural step, simply because the men of 
South America have taught the fathers and mothers of 
these colts to amble through uncounted generations. 
Now in North America we train horses to trot, and 
the consequence is that amblers are scarce, and in most 
cases have to be educated to their gait. This is the 
way in which nature adapts herself to popular want 
and popular usage. The large variety of apples which 
load our orchards were developed from the insignificant 
crab, and the peach was the child of the almond, or 
the almond of the peach — I have forgotten which. 
"Now I suppose (with some feeble doubts about it) that 
man and woman started exactly together, that her 
singing treble better than she does bass results from 
usage, and that her singing treble rather than bass was 



The Rights of Woman. 103 

purely a matter of accident at first. All analogy 
teaches me that if she had begun on bass, and the other 
part had been given to man, we should be hearing to- 
day of Ma'lle Patti, " the charming new baritone," and 
" the magnificent basso," Madame Jenny Lind Gold- 
schmidt, while admiring crowds would toss flowers to 
Carl Formes, " the unapproachable soprano," or Mario, 
" the king of contraltos." 

I suppose that those who maintain that woman has 
no natural organs and aptitudes for singing bass, would 
say that she has no natural organs and aptitudes for 
boxing and playing at ball. Just because woman holds 
her fists the wrong side up, as if she were kneading 
bread rather than flesh, it is claimed that she was not 
made for the " manly art of self-defence," and from the 
wholly incompetent facts that she cannot throw a ball 
three feet against a common north-west wind, and is 
not as fleet as a deer, it is judged that she has no right 
to engage in base-ball. But suppose all women had 
been accustomed to boxing and playing ball as much 
as the men have been ; would they not have arrived 
at corresponding excellence ? I know that as women 
are now (and they please me exceedingly) they have 
not muscle to " hit from the shoulder " with force suf- 
ficient to make them formidable antagonists ; and I am 
aware that they lack something in the length of limb 
requisite for the rapid locomotion of the ball-ground ; 



104 Leffons in Life. 

but they have never had a chance. See what the 
washerwomen have done for themselves. They seem 
to be a separate race of beings, for they all have large 
arms, and shoulders that would do honor to Tom Sayers. 
I have seen negro slave women at work in the field, 
with a muscular development that would be the envy 
of a Bowery boy. The washerwoman and the field 
slave show what can be done by cultivation. I know 
that their style of figure is not quite so attractive as I 
have seen, and I know that wherever there is an ex- 
traordinary tax upon muscle there is an extraordinary 
repression of mind and blunting of the sensibilities, but 
it must be remembered that we are talking about 
rights, now. I claim and maintain, (I may as well come 
out with the whole of it,) that a woman has a right to 
do any thing she chooses to do, with perhaps the unim- 
portant exception of becoming the father of a family. 

The truth is that women have never had a fair 
chance. They can do any thing they are trained to do. 
The proper physical culture of woman, carried on 
through a competent number of generations, would 
develop her beyond all our present conceptions. She 
would be likely to arrive at a high condition of muscle 
and a lov/ condition of mind, very unlike our present 
idea of the noblest type of womanhood ; but very pos- 
sibly our ideals of womanhood are conventional, or tradi- 
tional. She has hands, and has a right to use them ; a 



The Rights of Woman. 105 

tongue, and the right to wag it in her own way ; pow- 
ers corresponding to those of man in all important re- 
spects, and the right to develop and employ them 
according to her taste and choice. I deny, to man, 
the privilege of defining the rights and duties of woman. 
A woman is mistress of her own actions and judge of 
her own powers and aptitudes ; and if any woman 
thinks that she can do a man's work better than what 
society considers her own, then she has an undeniable 
right to do it, if she can get it to do, and is willing to 
accept the work with the conditions that attend it. 

I am a firm believer in " woman's rights " — espe- 
cially her right to do as she pleases. It is possible 
that, before the law, she is not in possession of all her 
rights, but all wrongs in this direction will be corrected 
as time progresses. I speak particularly at this time 
of her right to sing bass, because it is a representative 
right, and covers, as with a lid, a whole chest full of 
others. Yet while I claim this right, I confess that I 
should not care to see it exercised to any great extent, 
for I think that treble is, by all odds, the finer and 
more attractive part in music. Is it worth while to 
exercise the right of singing bass, when it costs a good 
deal to get up a voice for it, and when treble comes 
natural and easy, and is very much pleasanter to the 
ear ? Bass would be a bad thing for a lullaby, and 
could only silence a baby by scaring it. If I should 



106 Leffons in Life. 

have committed to me the melodies of the world, I 
would care very little about my right to sing those 
subordinate parts that gather around them in obedient 
harmonies. At least, I think I would, unless some up- 
start man should deny my right to sing any thing but 
melodies. If it were committed to me to sing like a 
bird, I would not care, I think, to exercise my right to 
roar like a bull. If I can witch the ears and win the 
hearts of men and women by doing that which I can 
do easily and naturally and well, then I shall do best 
not to exercise my right to do that which I can only do 
difficultly, and unnaturally, and ill. 

Woman, in my apprehension, is the mistress, not 
alone of the melody of music, but of the melody of 
life. Whatever it may be possible to do by cultivation 
and a long course of development, it is doubtful whether 
a woman would ever sing bass well. I am aware that 
she has the right, and the organs, but I question 
whether her bass would amount to any thing — whether 
it would be worth singing. When women talk with 
me about their right to vote, and their right to prac- 
tise law, and their right to engage in any business which 
usage has assigned to man, I say "yes — you have all 
those rights." I never dispute with them at all. In- 
deed, you see how I have put myself forward as the 
defender of these same rights ; yet I should be sorry 
to see- them exercised by the women I admire and 



The Rights of Woman. 107 

love. It is all very well to say that the presence of 
woman at the ballot-hox would purify it, and restrain 
the manners of the men around it ; but I have seen 
enough of the world to learn that all human influence 
is reciprocal and reactionary. Man and the ballot-box 
might gain, but woman would lose, and men and the 
ballot-box themselves would lose in the long run. The 
ballot-box is the bass, and it should be man's business 
to sing it, while woman should give him home melody 
with which it should harmonize. 

In the matter of rights, I suppose that I should not 
differ materially with any strong-minded woman ; but 
I have always observed that the most truly lovable, 
humble, pure-hearted, God-fearing and humanity-loving 
women of my acquaintance, never say any thing about 
these rights, and scorn those of their sex who do. I 
have never known a woman who was at once satisfied 
in her affections and discontented with her woman's 
lot and her woman's work. There is a weak place, or 
a wrong place, or a rotten place, in the character or 
nature of every woman who stands and howls upon 
the spot where her Creator placed her, and neglects 
her own true work and life while claiming the right to 
do the work and live the life of man. I will admit all 
the rights that such a woman claims — all that I my- 
self possess — if she will let me alone, and keep her dis- 
tance from me. She may sing bass, but I do not 



108 Leffons in Life. 

wish to hear her. She is repulsive to rue. She offends 
me. 

I believe in women. I helieve they are the sweetest, 
purest, most unselfish, best part of the human race. I 
have no doubt on this subject, whatever. They do 
sing the melody in all human life, as well as the melody 
in music. They carry the leading part, at least in the 
sense that they are a step in advance of us, all the way 
in the journey heavenward. I believe that they cannot 
move very widely out of the sphere which they now 
occupy, and remain as good as they now are ; and I 
deny that my belief rests upon any sentimentality, or 
jealousy, or any other weak or unworthy basis. A 
man who has experienced a mother's devotion, a wife's 
self-sacrificing love, and a daughter's affection, and is 
grateful for all, may be weakly sentimental about some 
things, but not about women. He would help every 
woman he loves to the exercise of all the rights which 
hold dignity and happiness for her. He would fight 
that she might have those rights, if necessary ; but he 
would rather have her lose her voice entirely, than 
to hear her sound a bass note so long as a demi-semi- 
quaver. 



LESSON VIII. 

AMEEICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION. 

" Keen are the pangs 
Advancement often brings. To be secure, 
Be bumble. To be bappy, be content." 

James Httkdis. 

"For not that which men covet most is best; 
Nor that thing worst which men do most refuse. 
But fittest is that each contented rest 
"With that they hold." Sfensee. 

"Men have different spheres. It is for some to evolve great moral truths, 
as the Heavens evolve stars, to guide the sailor on the sea and the traveller on 
the desert; and it is for some, like the sailor and the traveller, simply to be 
guided.'" — Beechek. 

VENERABLE gentleman who once occupied a 
prominent position in a leading New England 
college, w T as remarking recently upon the difficulty which 
he experienced in obtaining servants who would attend 
to their duties. He had just dismissed a girl of sixteen, 
who was so much " above her business " as to be intol- 
erable. The girl's father, who was an Englishman, 



110 Leffons in Life. 

called upon him for an explanation. The employer told 
his stoiy, every word of which the father received 
without question, and then remarked, with considerable 
vehemence : " It is all owing to those cursed public 
schools." The father retired, and the old professor sat 
down and thought about it ; and the result of his think- 
ing did not differ materially from that of the father. 
It was not, of course, that there was any thing in the 
studies pursued which had tended to unfit the girl for 
her duties. It was very possible indeed for the girl to 
have been a better servant in consequence of her intel- 
ligence. There was nothing in English grammar or 
the multiplication table to produce insubordination and 
discontent. There was nothing in the whole case that 
tended to condemn public schools, as such ; but it was 
the spirit inculcated by the teachers of public schools, 
which had spoiled this girl for her place, and which has 
spoiled, and is still spoiling, thousands of others. 

Let us look for a moment into the influence of such 
a motto as the following, written over a school-house 
door — always before the eyes of the pupils, and always 
alluded to by school committees and visitors who are 
invited to " make a few remarks " : 

"Nothing is i?npossible to him who wills." 

This abominable lie is placed before a room full of 
children and youth, of widely varying capacities, and 



American Public Education. ill 

great diversity of circumstances. They are called upon 
to look at it, and believe in it. Suppose a girl of hum- 
ble mental abilities and humble circumstances looks at 
this motto, and says : " I 'will' be a lady. I 'will' be 
independent. I 'will' be subject to no man's or wo- 
man's bidding." Under these circumstances, the girl's 
father, who is poor, removes her from school, and tells 
her that she must earn her living. Now I ask what 
kind of a spirit she can carry into her service, except 
that of surly and impudent discontent ? She has been 
associating in school, perhaps, with girls whom she is 
to serve in the family she enters. Has she not been 
made unfit for her place by the influences of the public 
school ? Have not her comfort and her happiness been 
spoiled by those influences ? Is her reluctant service 
of any value to those who pay her the wages of her 
labor ? 

It is safe, at least, to make the proposition that pub- 
lic schools are a curse to all the youth whom they unfit 
for their proper places in the world. It is the favorite 
theory of teachers that every man can make of himself 
any thing that he really chooses to make. They resort . 
to this theory to rouse the ambition of their more slug- 
gish pupils, and thus get more study out of them. I 
have known entire schools instructed to aim at the 
highest places in society, and the most exalted offices 
of life. I have known enthusiastic old fools who made 



112 Leffons in Life. 

it their principal business to go from school to school, 
and talk such stuff to the pupils as would tend to unfit 
every one of humble circumstances and slender possi- 
bilities for the life that lay before him. The fact is 
persistently ignored, in many of these schools, estab- 
lished emphatically for the education of the people, that 
the majority of the places in this world are subordinate 
and low places. Every boy and girl is taught to " be 
something " in the world, which would be very well if 
being " something " were being what God intended 
they should be ; but when being" something" involves 
the transformation of what God intended should be a 
respectable shoemaker into a very indifferent and a 
very slow minister of the Gospel, the harmful and even 
the ridiculous character of the instruction becomes 
apparent. 

There are two classes of evil results attending the in- 
culcation of these favorite doctrines of the school teach- 
ers — first, the unfitting of men and women for humble 
places ; and, second, the impulsion of men of feeble pow- 
er into high places, for the duties of which they have 
neither natural nor acquired fitness. There are no 
longer any American girls who go out to service in 
families. They went into mills from the chamber and 
the kitchen, but now they have left the mills, and their 
places are filled by Scotch and Irish girls. Why is 
this? Is it because that among the American girls 



American Public Education. 113 

there are none of poverty, and of humble powers ? Is 
it because they are not wanted ? Or is it because they 
have become unfitted for such services as these, and 
feel above them ? Is it not because they have become 
possessed of notions that would render thera uncomfort- 
able in family service, and render any family they might 
serve uncomfortable ? An American servant, who good- 
naturedly accepts her condition, and knows and loves 
her place, who is willing to acknowledge that she has a 
mistress, and who enters into her department of the fam- 
ily life as a harmonious and happy member, may exist, 
but I do not know her. People have ceased inquiring for 
American servants. They would like them, generally, 
because they are intelligent and Protestant, but they 
cannot get them because they are unwilling to accept 
service, and the obligations and conditions it imposes. 
Where all the American girls are, I do not know. I 
can remember the time when thrifty farmers, mechan- 
ics, and tradesmen took wives from the,kitchens of gen- 
tlemen where they were employed, — good, intelligent, 
self-respectful women they were, too — who became 
modest mistresses of thrifty families afterward ; — but 
that is all done with now. Under the present mode 
of education, nobody is fitted for a low place, and 
everybody is taught to look for a high one. 

If we go into a school exhibition, our ears are deaf- 
ened by declamation addressed to ambition. The 



114 Leffons in Life. 

boys have sought out from literature every stirring ap- 
peal to effort, and every extravagant promise of re- 
ward. The compositions of the girls are of the same 
general tone. We hear of " infinite yearnings," from 
the lips of girls who do not know enough to make a 
pudding, and of being polished " after the similitude of 
a palace " from those who do not comprehend the com- 
monest duties of life. Every thing is on the high-pres- 
sure principle. The boys, all of them, have the gen- 
eral idea that every thing that is necessary to become 
great men is to try for it ; and each one supposes it 
possible for him to become Governor of the State, or 
President of the Union. The idea of being educated 
to fill a humble office in life is hardly thought of, and 
every bumpkin who has a memory sufficient for the 
words repeats the stanza :— 

"Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time." 

There is a fine ring to this familiar quatrain of Mr. 
Longfellow, but it is nothing more than a musical 
cheat. It sounds like truth, but it is a lie. The lives 
of great men all remind us that they have made their 
own memory sublime, but they do not assure us at all 
that we can leave footprints like theirs behind us. If 
you do not believe it, go to the cemetery yonder. 



American Public Education. 115 

There they lie — ten thousand upturned faces — ten thou- 
sand breathless bosoms. There was a time when fire 
flashed in those vacant orbits, and warm ambitions 
pulsed in those bosoms. Dreams of fame and power 
once haunted those hollows skulls. Those little piles 
of bones that once were feet ran swiftly and determin- 
edly through forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years of life ; 
but where are the prints they left ? " He lived — he 
died — he was buried" — is all that the headstone tells 
us. We move among the monuments, we see the sculp- 
ture, but no voice comes to us to say that the sleepers 
are remembered for any thing they ever did. Natural 
affection pays its tribute to its departed object, a gen- 
eration passes by, the stone grows gray, and the man 
has ceased to be, and is to the world as if he had never 
lived. Why is it that no more have left a name be- 
hind them ? Simply because they were not endowed 
by their Maker with the power to do it, and because 
the offices of life are mainly humble, requiring only 
humble powers for their fulfilment." The cemeteries 
of one hundred years hence will be like those of to-day. 
Of all those now in the schools of this country, dream- 
ing of fame, not one in twenty thousand will be heard 
of then, — not one in twenty thousand will have left a 
footprint behind him. 

ISTow I believe that a school, in order to be a good 
one, should be one that will fit men and women, in the 



116 Leffons in Life. 

best way, for the humble positions that the great mass 
of them must necessarily occupy in life. It is not ne- 
cessary that boys and girls be taught any less than 
they are taught now. They should receive more prac- 
tical knowledge than they do now, without a doubt, 
and less of that which is simply ornamental, but they 
cannot know too much. An intelligent gardener is 
better than a clod-hopper, and an educated nurse is 
better than an ignorant one ; but if the gardener and 
the nurse have been spoiled for their business and 
their condition, by the sentiments which they have im- 
bibed with their knowledge, they are made uncomfort- 
able to themselves, and to those whom they serve. I 
do not care how much knowledge a man may have 
acquired in school, that school has been a curse to him 
if its influence has been to make him unhappy in his 
place, and to fill him with futile ambitions. 

The country has great reason to lament the effect of 
the kind of instruction upon which I have remarked. 
The universal greed for office is nothing but an indica- 
tion of the appetite for distinction which has been dili- 
gently fed from childhood. It is astonishing to see the 
rush for office on the occasion of the change of a State 
or National Administration." Men will leave quiet and 
remunerative employments, and subject themselves to 
mean humiliations, simply to get their names into a 
newspaper, and to achieve a little official importance 



American Public Education. 117 

and social distinction. This desire for distinction seems 
to run through the whole social body, as a kind of 
moral scrofula, developing itself in various ways, accord- 
ing to circumstances and peculiarities of constitution. 
The consequence is that politics have become the pursuit 
of small men, and we no longer have an opport unity to 
put the best men into office. The scramble for place 
among fools is so great and so successful, that men of 
dignity and modesty retire from the field in disgust. 
Everybody wants to " be something," and in order to be 
something, everbody must leave his proper place in the 
world, and assume a position which God never intended 
he should fill. Look in upon a State legislature once, 
and you will find sufficient illustration of my meaning. 
ISTot one man in five of the whole number possesses the 
first qualification for making the laws of a State, and 
half of them never read the constitution of the country, 
I mean no contempt for the good, honest men of whom 
our State legislatures are principally composed, but I 
wish simply to say that there is nothing in their qual- 
ity of mind, habits of thought, intellectual power, or 
style of pursuits that fits them for the great and mo- 
mentous functions of legislation. They are there, a set 
of " nobodies," mainly for the purpose of becoming 
" somebodies," and not for any object connected with 
the good of the State. 

Somehow, all the students in all our schools get the 



118 Leffons in Life. 

idea, that a man in order to be " somebody " must be 
in public life. Now think of the fact that the millions 
attending school in this country have in some way 
acquired this idea, and that only one in every one 
thousand of these is either needed in public life, or can 
win success there. Let this fact be realized, and it is 
easy to see that the nine hundred and ninety-nine will 
feel that they are somehow cheated out of their birth- 
right. They desired to be in public life, and be " some- 
body," but they are not, and so their life grows tame 
and tasteless to them. They are disappointed. The 
men solace themselves with a petty justice's commis- 
sion, or a town office of some kind, and the women — 
some of them — talk about " woman's rights," and make 
themselves notorious and ridiculous at public meetings. 
I think women have rights which they do not at pres- 
ent enjoy, but I have very little confidence in the mo- 
tives of their petticoated champions, who court mobs, de- 
light in notoriety, and glory in their opportunity to 
burst away from private life, and be recognized by the 
public as "somebodies." I insist on this: — that pri- 
vate and even obscure life is the normal condition of 
the great multitude of men and women in this world ; 
and that, to serve this private life, public life is insti- 
tuted. Public life has no legitimate significance save 
as it is related to the service of private life. It re- 
quires peculiar talents and peculiar education, and 



American' Public Education. 119 

brings with it peculiar trials ; and the man best fitted 
for it would be the last man confidently to assert his 
fitness for it. 

Thousands seek to become " somebodies" through 
the avenues of professional life ; and so professional 
life is full of " nobodies." The pulpit is crowded with 
goodish " nobodies " — men who have no power — no 
unction — no mission. They strain their brains to write 
common-places, and wear themselves out repeating the 
rant of their sect and the cant of their schools. The 
bar is cursed with " nobodies" as much as the pulpit. 
The lawyers are few ; the pettifoggers are many. The 
bar, more than any other medium, is that through 
which the ambitious youth of the country seek to attain 
political eminence. Thousands go into the study of 
law, not so much for the sake of the profession, as for 
the sake of the advantages it is supposed to give them 
for political preferment. An ambitious boy who has 
taken it into his head to be " somebody," always studies 
law ; and as soon as he is " admitted to the bar " he is 
ready to begin his political scheming. Multitudes of 
lawyers are a disgrace to their profession, and a curse 
to their country. They lack the brains necessary to 
make them respectable, and the morals requisite for 
good neighborhood. They live on quarrels, and breed 
them that they may live. They have spoiled them- 
selves for private life, and they spoil the private life 



120 



Leffons in Life. 



around them. As for the medical profession, I tremble 
to think how many enter it because they have neither 
piety enough for preaching, nor brains enough to prac- 
tice law. When I think of the great army of little men 
that is yearly commissioned to go forth into the world 
with a case of sharp knives in one hand, and a maga- 
zine of drugs in the other, I heave a sigh for the human 
race. Especially is all this lamentable when we remem- 
ber that it involves the spoiling of thousands of good 
farmers and mechanics, to make poor professional men, 
while those who would make good professional men 
are obliged to attend to the simple duties of life, and 
submit to preaching that neither feeds nor stimulates 
them, and medicine that kills or fails to cure them. 

There must be something radically wrong in our 
educational system, when youth are generally unfitted 
for the station which they are to occupy, or are forced 
into professions for which they have no natural fitness. 
The truth is that the stuff talked to boys and girls 
alike, about " aiming high," and the assurances given 
them, indiscriminately, that they can be any thing that 
they choose to become, are essential nuisances. Our 
children all go to the public schools. They are all 
taught these things. They all go out into the world 
with high notions, and find it impossible to content 
themselves with their lot. They had hoped to realize 
in life that which had been promised them in school, 



American Public Education. 



121 



but all their dreams have faded, and left them disap- 
pointed and unhappy. They envy these whom they 
have been taught to consider above them, and learn 
to count their own lives a failure. Girls starve in a 
mean poverty, or do worse, because they are too proud 
to work in a chamber, or go into a shop. American 
servants are obsolete, all common employments are at 
a discount, the professions are crowded to overflowing, 
the country throngs with demagogues, and a general 
discontent with a humble lot prevails, simply because 
the youth of America have had the idea drilled into 
them that to be in private life, in whatever condition, 
is to be, in some sense, a "nobody." It is possible 
that the schools are not exclusively to blame for this 
state of things, and that our political harangues, and 
even our political institutions, have something to do 
with it. 

"What we greatly need in this country is the incul- 
cation of soberer views of life. Boys and girls are 
bred to discontent. Everybody is after a high place, 
and nearly everybody fails to get one ; and, failing, 
loses heart, temper, and content. The multitude dress 
beyond their means, and live beyond their necessities, 
to keep up a show of being what they are not. Farm? 
ers' daughters do not love to become farmers' wives, 
and even their fathers and mothers stimulate their 
ambition to exchange their station for one which stands 



122 Leffons in Life. 

higher in the world's estimation. Humble employ- 
ments are held iu contempt, and humble powers are 
everywhere making high employments contemptible. 
Our children need to be educated to fill, in Christian 
humility, the subordinate offices of life which they must 
fill, and taught to respect humble callings, and to beau- 
tify and glorify them by lives of contented and glad 
industry. When public schools accomplish an end so 
desirable as this, they will fulfil their mission, and they 
will not before. I seriously doubt whether one school 
in a hundred, public or private, comprehends its duty 
in this particular. They fail to inculcate the idea that 
the majority of the offices of life are humble, that the 
powers of the majority of the youth which they contain 
have relation to those offices, that no man is respect- 
able when he is out of his place, and that half of the 
unhappiness of the world grows out of the fact, that, 
from distorted views of life, men are in places where 
they do not belong. Let us have this thing altogether 
reformed. 



LESSON IX, 

PEEVEESENESS. 



"Because she's constant, he will change, 
And kindest glances coldly meet, 
And all the time he seems so strange, 
His soul is fawning at her feet." 

Coventry Patmoee. 

" All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so as to do as little good 
and plague and disappoint as many people as possible. 1 ' — Hazlitt. 

IT seems to me, either that there is a great deal of 
human nature in a pig, or that there is a great deal 
of pig in human nature. I find myself always sympa- 
thizing with a pig that wishes to go in an opposite 
direction to that in which its owner would drive it. It 
would he a sufficient reason for me to desire to go east- 
ward, that a man was behind me, with an oath in his 
mouth and a very heavy hoot on his foot, endeavoring 
to drive me westward. We are jealous of our freedom. 
We naturally rise in opposition to a will that under- 



124 Leffons in Life. 



takes to command our movements. This is not the 
result of education at all ; it is pure human nature. 
Command a child — who shall be only old enough to 
understand you — to refrain from some special act, and 
you excite in his heart a desire to do that act ; and he 
will have, nine times in ten, no reason for his desire to 
do it but your command that he shall not. The young- 
est human soul that has a will at all, takes the first 
occasion to declare its independence. 

Now, I believe this principle in human nature to 
be, in itself, good. It is that which declares a man's 
right to himself — that which asserts personal liberty in 
thought, will, and movement. I believe it existed in 
Adam and Eve, and that it is more than likely that the 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil was despoiled 
because our beautiful great-grandmother, (for whom I 
confess much sympathy and affection,) was forbidden 
to touch it. It is a principle which should always be 
carefully distinguished from perverseness, in all our 
dealings with young and old, and in all our estimates 
of human character. When a child obeys a man, or 
when one man obeys another, it should always be for 
good and sufficient reason. Neither child nor man 
should be expected to surrender his right to himself 
without the presentation to him of the proper motive. 
"When, yielding to this motive, the soul consents to be 
directed or led, it becomes obedient. Compulsion may 



Perverfenefs. 125 



secure conformity, but never obedience. If I, as a child 
or man, am to yield myself to the direction of any other 
man, that man is bound to present to me an adequate 
motive for the surrender. God throws upon me per- 
sonal responsibility — gives me to myself — and no man, 
parent or otherwise, can make me truly obedient with- 
out giving me the motive for obedience. When a child 
or a man fails to yield to the legitimate motives of 
obedience, he is perverse, and it is about perverseness 
in some of its forms of manifestation that I propose to 
talk in this article. 

At starting, I must give perverseness a somewhat 
broader meaning than that thus far indicated. I will 
say that that person is perverse who, from vanity, or 
pride of opinion and will, or malice, or any mean con- 
sideration, refuses to yield his conduct and himself to 
those motives and influences which his reason and con- 
science recognize to be pure and good and true. In 
its least aggravated form, perhaps, we find it among 
lovers. "Women will sometimes persistently ignore a 
passion which they know has taken full possession of 
them, and grieve the heart that loves them by a cold- 
ness and indifference which they do not feel at all. 
Rather than acknowledge their affection for one whose 
loss would kill them, or, what would be the same thing, 
kill the world for them, they have lied, grown sick, and 
gone nearly insane. This is a perverseness very uncom- 



126 



Leffons in Life. 



mon. Sometimes lovers have been very tender and 
devoted so long as a doubt of ultimate mutual posses- 
sion remained to give zest to their passion, but the 
moment this doubt has been removed, one or the other 
has become incomprehensibly indifferent. 

I have noticed that very few married pairs are 
matches in the matter of warmth and expression of 
passion between the parties. The man will be all de- 
votion and tenderness — brimming with expressions of 
affection and exhibitions of fondness, and the woman 
all coolness and passivity, or (which is much more com- 
mon) the woman will be active in expression, lavish- 
ing caresses and tendernesses upon a man who very 
possibly grows harder and colder with every delicate 
proof that the whole wealth of his wife's nature is 
poured at his feet, as a libation upon an altar. It is 
here that we see some of the strangest cases of per- 
verseness that it is possible to conceive. I know men 
who are not bad men — who, I suppose, really love and 
respect their wives — and who would deny themselves 
even to heroism to give them the comforts and luxuries 
of life, yet who find themselves moved to reject with 
poorly-covered scorn, and almost to resent, the varied 
expressions of affection to which those wives give utter- 
ance. I know wives who long to pour their hearts into 
the hearts of their husbands, and to get sympathetic 
and fitting response, but who are never allowed to do 



Perverfenefs. 127 



it. They live a constrained, suppressed, unsatisfied 
life. They absolutely pine for the privilege of saying 
freely what they feel, in all love's varied languages, 
toward men who love them, but who grow harder with 
every approach of tenderness and colder with every 
warm, invading breath. A shower that purifies the 
atmosphere, and refreshes the face of heaven itself, 
sours cream, j ust as love's sweetest expression sours 
these men. 

I have known wives to walk through such an ex- 
perience as this into a condition of abject slavery — to 
waste their affection without return, until they have 
become poor, and spiritless, and mean. I have known 
them to lose their will — to become the mere dependent 
mistresses of their husbands — to be creeping cravens 
in dwellings where it should be their privilege to move 
as radiant queens. I have known them thrown back 
upon themselves, until they have become bitter railers 
against their husbands — uncomfortable companions — 
openly and shamelessly flouting their affection. I do 
not know what to make of the perverseness which in- 
duces a man to repel the advances of a heart which 
worships him, and to become hard and tyrannical in 
the degree by which that heart seeks to express its 
affection for him. There are husbands who would take 
the declaration that they do not love their wives as an 
insult, yet who hold the woman who loves them in fear 



128 Leffons in Life. 



and restraint through their whole life. I know wives 
who move about their houses with a trembling regard 
to the moods and notions of their husbands — wives 
who have no more liberty than slaves, who never spend 
a cent of money without a feeling of guilt, and who 
never give an order about the house without the. same 
doubt of their authority that they would have if they 
were only housekeepers, employed at a very economical 
salary. I can think of no proper punishment for such 
husbands except daily ducking in a horse-pond, until 
reformation. Yet these asses are so unconscious of 
their detestable habits of feeling and life, that, prob- 
ably, not one of them who reads this will think that I 
mean him, but will wonder where I have lived to fall 
in with such outlandish people. 

The most precious possession that ever comes to a 
man in this world is a woman's heart. Why some 
graceful and most amiable women whom I know will 
persist in loving some men whom I also know, is more 
than I know. I will not call their love an exhibition 
of perverseness, though it looks like it ; but that these 
men with these rich, sweet hearts in their hands, grow 
sour and snappish, and surly and tyrannical and exact- 
ing, is the most unaccountable thing in the world. If 
a pig will not allow himself to be driven, he will follow 
a man who offers him corn, and he will eat the corn, 
even though he puts his feet in the trough ; but there 



Perverfenefs. 129 



are men — some of them of Christian professions — who 
take every tenderness their wives bring them, and 
every expression of affection, and every service, and 
every yearning sympathy, and trample them under 
feet without tasting them, and without a look of grati- 
tude in their eyes. Hard, cold, thin-blooded, white- 
livered, contemptible curmudgeons — they think their 
wives weak and foolish, and themselves wise and dig- 
nified ! I beg my readers to assist me in despising 
them. I do not feel adequate to the task of doing 
them justice. 

There is another exhibition of perverseness which 
we sometimes see in families. There will be, perhaps, 
from two to half a dozen sisters in a family, amiable all 
of them. Now, think of the reasons which should bind 
them together in the tenderest sympathy. They were 
born of the same mother, they were nursed at the same 
heart, they were cradled under the same roof by 
the same hand, they have knelt at the side of the 
same father, their interests, trials, associates, stand- 
ing — >every thing concerning their family and social 
life — are the same. The honor of one intimately con- 
cerns the honor of the other, yet I have known such 
families of sisters fly apart the moment they be- 
came in any way independent of each other, as if 
they were natural enemies. I have seen them take 
the part of a friend against any member of the family 



130 Leflbns in Life. 

band, and become disgusted with one another's so- 
ciety. "Where matters have not gone to this length, 
I have seen sisters who would never caress each 
other, or, by any but the most formal and dignified 
methods, express their affection for each other. I 
have seen them live together for months and years as 
inexpressive of affection for each other as cattle hi a 
stall, — more so : for I have seen a cow affectionately 
lick her neighbor's ear by the half-hour, while among 
these girls I have failed to see a kiss, or hear a tender 
word, or witness any exhibition of sisterly affection 
whatever. 

One of the most common forms of perverseness, 
though one of the most subtle and least known, is that 
shown by people who study to shut everybody out 
from a knowledge of their nature and their life. They 
make it their grand end and aim to appear to be ex- 
actly what they are not, to appear to believe exactly 
what they do not believe, and to appear to feel what 
they do not feel at all, This is not because they are 
ashamed of themselves, or because they really have any 
thing to conceal. They have simply taken on this form 
of perverseness. They will not, if they can help it, al- 
low any man to get inside of their natures and charac- 
ters. If they write you a letter, they will mislead you. 
They will say to you irreverent and shocking things, 
to prove to you that they are bold, and unfeeling, and 



Perverfenefs. 131 



unthoughtful, when they tremble at what they have 
written, and really show by their language that they 
are afraid, and full of feeling, and very thoughtful. If 
they have a sentiment of love for anybody, they take 
it as a dog would a bone, and go and dig a hole in the 
ground and bury it, only resorting to it in the dark, for 
private craunching. Very likely they will try to make 
you believe that they live a most dainty and delicate life 
— that the animals of the field, and the fowls of the air 
love them, and come at their call — that clouds arrange 
themselves in heaven for their benefit, and are suffi- 
ciently paid for the effort by their admiration — that 
flowers excite them to frenzy — a very fine frenzy, in- 
deed — and that all sounds shape themselves to music in 
their souls. They would have you think that they live 
a kind of charmed life — that the sun woos them, and the 
moon pines for them, and the sea sobs because they will 
not come, and the daisies wait lovingly for their feet, 
yet, if you knew the truth, you would see that they sit 
discontentedly among the homeliest surroundings of 
domestic life, with their sleeves rolled up — confound 
them ! 

This variety of perverseness seems very inexplic- 
able. I have seen much of it, but do not know what to 
make of it. There is doubtless something morbid in 
it. It is often carried to such extremes, and managed 
so artfully, that multitudes are deceived by it. I know 



132 LefTons in Life. 



of some very beautiful natures that pass in the world 
for rough and coarse. I know men who have the repu- 
tation of being hard and harsh, yet who are, inside, and 
in their own consciousness, as gentle and sensitive as 
women — who put on a stern air and a repellent man- 
ner, when they are really yearning for sympathy. I 
have seen this air and manner broken through and bat- 
tered down by a friendly man, who found what he sus- 
pected behind it — a generous, warm, noble heart. This 
perverseness seems to be akin to that of the miser who 
knows he is rich, takes his highest delight in being rich, 
and yet dresses meanly, and fares like a beggar rather 
than be thought rich. "Women hide themselves more 
than men. They are generally more sensitive, and their 
life and circumscribed habits have a tendency to the 
formation of morbid moods, and this among the num- 
ber. 

Of the perverseness of partisanship in politics much 
is written, and my pen need not dip into it ; but there 
is a perverseness exhibited by Christian churches in 
their quarrels that should be exposed and discussed, 
because some people have an impression that it may 
possibly be piety. "For dum squizzle, read perma- 
nence^ said an editor, correcting a typographical error 
that had found its way into his journal. It seems as 
strange that perverseness should be mistaken for piety, 
as that " permanence " should be mistaken for " dum 



Perverfenefs. 133 



squizzle," but I believe it often is. Let some little 
cause of disturbance arise, and become active in a 
church, and it is astonishing how both parties go to 
work and pray over it. The pastor, perhaps, has said 
something on the subject of slavery, or he does not 
preach doctrine enough, or he preaches the wrong sort 
of doctrine, or he does not visit his people enough, or 
there is " a row " about the singing, or about a change 
in the hymn-books, or about repairing the church, or 
buying an organ, or something or other, and straight- 
way sides are taken, and the wills of both parties get 
roused. It is sometimes laughable — it would always 
be, only that it is too sad — to see how quickly both 
parties grow pious, as they grow perverse. It would 
seem, as the strife waxes hot, that the glory of God 
was never so much in their hearts as now. They pray 
with fervor, they are constant in their public religious 
duties, they pass through the most scrupulous self-ex- 
aminations, and then fight on to the bitter end; be- 
lieving, I suppose, that they are really doing God ser- 
vice, when they are only gratifying their own perverse 
wills. 

Churches have been ruined, or divided, or crippled 
in their power, by a cause of quarrel too insignificant 
to engage the minds of sensible worldly men for an 
hour. I have heard it said that church quarrels are 
the most violent of all quarrels, because religious feel- 



134 "Leflbns in Life. 

ings are the strongest feelings of our nature. I confess 
that I do not see the force of this statement, for it does 
not appear to me that religious feelings have much to 
do with these quarrels. I can much more easily see 
why all personal differences should be adjusted peace- 
ably in a church, for there it is supposed that the indi- 
vidual will is subordinated to the cause of religion and 
the general good. The real basis of the bitterness of 
church quarrels is women. There are no others, ex- 
cept neighborhood quarrels, in which women mingle, 
and a neighborhood quarrel will at once be recognized 
as more like a church quarrel than any other. Women 
have strong feelings, are attracted or repulsed through 
their sensibilities, conceive keen likes and dislikes, do 
not stop to reason, and are, of course, the readiest and 
the most devoted partisans. If the mouths of the wo- 
men could only be smothered in a church quarrel, it 
would be settled much easier. Of all the perverse 
creatures in this world, a woman who has thoroughly 
committed herself to any man, or any cause, is the least 
tractable and reasonable. I hope this statement will 
not offend my sweet friends, because it is so true that 
I cannot conscientiously retract it. 

What the books call pride of opinion, is, nine cases 
in ten, simple perverseness. I know a most venerable 
public teacher of physiology, whose early theory of the 
production of animal heat — very ridiculous in itself — is 



Perverfeneis. 135 



still yearly announced from his desk, notwithstanding 
the fact that the whole world has received another, 
whose soundness is demonstrated beyond all question. 
As he, year after year, declares his belief that animal 
heat is produced by corpuscular friction in the circula- 
ting blood, there is a twinkle of the eyes among his 
amused auditors which says very plainly — "the old 
gentleman does not believe this, himself." The young- 
est student before him knows better than to give his 
theory a moment's consideration. Well, the old Doc- 
tor is not alone. The world is full of this kind of thing. 
Men adhere to old opinions and old policies long after 
they have learned that they are shallow or untenable, 
not from a genuine pride of opinion, (I doubt very much 
whether there really is any thing that should be called 
pride of opinion,) but from genuine perverseness of 
disposition. Men will give, in some heated moment, 
an opinion touching some one's character or powers, 
and, though that opinion be proved to be wrong a 
thousand times, they will never acknowledge that they 
have made a mistake. This is simple perverseness, of 
the meanest variety. There are some kinds of per- 
verseness which impress one not altogether unpleas- 
antly, but this affects a man with equal anger and 
disgust. 

Perverseness is a sign of weakness — nay, an ele- 
ment of weakness — in man or woman. It is no legiti- 



136 Leffons in Life. 



mate part of a true character. The generous, out- 
spoken man, who is not afraid to show himself, and 
what there is in him, who cares more about the right 
way than his way, who throws away an opinion as he 
would throw away an old hat, the moment he finds it 
is worthless, and who good-naturedly allows the fric- 
tions of society to straighten out all the kinks there 
are in him, is the strong man always, and always the 
one whom men love. Perverseness is really moral 
strabismus, and I am shocked to think what a multi- 
tude of squint-eyed souls there will be, when we come 
to look into one another's faces in the " undress of im- 
mortality." 



LESSM X 



UNDEVELOPED EESOUECES. 



"The world is God's seed-bed. He has planted deep and multitudinously, 
and many things there are which have not yet come up." — Beechee. 

ONE of the richest and best of the smaller class of 
American cities is New Bedford ; and the secret 
of its wealth and beauty is oil. It is but a few years 
since the immense fleet of vessels that made that thrifty 
port their home went out with certainty of success in 
their dangerous enterprises, and came back loaded 
down with spoil. All that beautiful wealth was won 
from the deep, and for years as many ships came and 
went as there were dwellings to give them speed and 
welcome. But the glory and the gain of the' whale- 
fishery are past. The noble prey, too persistently and 
mercilessly pursued, has retired northward, and hidden 
among the icebergs. Now, when a ship's crew win a 
cargo, they win it from the clutches of eternal frost. 



1; 



Leflbns in Life. 



It seems certain that the fishery will dwindle, year 
after year, until, at last, only a few adventurers will 
linger near the pole, to watch for the rare game that 
once furnished light for the civilized world. All this 
is very unpleasant for New Bedford ; but are we to 
have no more oil ? Is nature failing ? Will the time 
come when people must sit in darkness ? 

A few months ago a man in Pennsylvania took it 
into his head to probe the ground for the source of a 
certain oil that made its appearance upon the surface. 
Down, down into the bowels of the earth he thrust his 
steam-driven harpoon, until he touched the living foun- 
tain of oil, which, gushing up, half drowned him. Now, 
all the region round about him swarms with industry. 
Thousands of meix are hurrying to and fro ; the puff of 
the engine is heard everywhere ; tens of thousands of 
barrels of oil are rolled out and turned into the chan- 
nels of commerce ; eager-eyed speculators throng all 
the converging avenues of travel, and a waiting world 
of consumers take the oil as fast as it is produced. 
Men in Virginia, New York, and Ohio are awaking to 
the consciousness that, while they have been paying 
for oil from the far Pacific, they have been living within 
three hundred feet of deposits greater than all the 
cargoes that ever floated in New Bedford harbor. 
For hundreds, and, probably, for thousands of years, 
men have walked over these deposits with no suspicion 



Undeveloped Refources. 139 

of their existence. Geologists have looked wise, as is 
their habit, but have given no hint of them. 

The simple truth appears to be that when, in the 
history of the world, it became necessary for these 
firmly-fastened store-houses of oil to be uncovered, 
they were uncovered. Nature had held them for un- 
told thousands of years for just this emergency. When 
the whales ceased spouting, the earth took up the busi- 
ness ; and " here she blows " and " there she blows " 
are heard in Tideoute and Titusville, while New Bed- 
ford sits sadly by the sea, and thinks of long absent 
crews to whom the cry has become strange. 

I cannot but look upon this discovery of oil in the 
earth as one of the most remarkable and instructive 
revelations of the age. It has shown to me that, when- 
ever human necessity demands any thing of the world 
of matter, the demand will be honored. Whenever 
animal life, or the muscle of man or brute, has shown 
itself unequal to the wants of an age, Nature has al- 
ways responded to the cry for help. Inventors are 
only men who act as pioneers, and who go forward to 
see what the human race will want next, and to make 
the necessary provisions. An inventor has profound 
faith in the exhaustiess resources of nature. He 
knows that if he bores far enough, and bores in the 
right direction, he will find that which the world needs. 
He is often no more than the discoverer of a secret 



140 LefTons in Life. 



which nature has kept for the satisfaction of the wants 
of an age. A lake yoked to a coal-bed would gener- 
ally be voted a slow team, but the inventor of the 
steam engine saw how it could be made a very fast and 
a very powerful one ; and we who live now are able to 
see that the discovery was made at the right time, and 
that, for the emergencies of this latter day, it has really 
quadrupled the power of civilized man. 

Think how nature has risen grandly up to meet 
every occasion for new resources. The revolution 
wrought, by steam in the business of the world created 
great wants, every one of which was filled as soon as 
felt. Quicker modes of communicating thought were 
needed to give us all the advantages of the increased 
facility of carriage, and Mr. Morse was permitted to 
uncover the telegraph. More money was wanted for 
the increased business of the world, and the gold fields 
of California and Australia were unveiled. It has 
always been so. In the march of the human race along 
the track of history, nature has pulled aside the veil in 
which she hides her treasures, to display that which 
she has kept in store for every epoch. In all the future 
I have no doubt that whenever oil shall be wanted, oil 
will be had for the boring. The world is fitted up with 
supplies for all the probable and possible wants of the 
human race. We are treading every day upon the lids 
of great secrets that await the wants of the larger style 



Undeveloped Refources. 141 

and finer type of life that lie before us. Discovery has 
but just begun, and will, I doubt not, be as rife in 
future ages as in this. There is no end of it : yet the 
world is a thing to be weighed and measured. It is so 
many miles around it, and so many miles through 
it. Never mind ; it has more in it than humanity can 
exhaust. 

When we talk of the material world, especially in 
its relation' to the constantly developing wants of man, 
we talk simply of the kitchen and larder of humanity. 
We have not ascended into the drawing-room, or con- 
servatory. The moment we step out of the considera- 
tion of manifested nature, we come into a world which 
may neither be weighed nor measured — the world of 
thought. I suppose that no author has ever entered a 
large library and stood in its alcoves and studied its 
titles long without asking himself the question : "what 
is there left for me to do ?" It seems as if men had 
been reaching in all directions for the discovery of 
thought since time began, and as if there were abso- 
lutely nothing new to be said upon any subject. Yet 
every age has always demanded its peculiar food, and 
every age has managed to get it. Certain great and 
peculiarly fruitful subjects, blowing in the sea of thought, 
have attracted whole fleets of authors for many years, 
and they are doubtless chased away no more to return ; 
but, here and there, while time shall last, strong men 



142 



Leffons in Life. 



will bore down to deposits of thought unsuspected by 
any of the preceding generations of men, and there will 
gush up streams to light the nations of the world. For 
the world of thought is, by its nature, exhaustless. The 
world of thought is the world in which God lives, and 
it is infinite like himself. We reach our hands out into 
the dark in any direction, and find a thought. It was 
God's before it was ours ; and on beyond that thought, 
lies another, and still another, ad infinitum. If our 
arms were long enough, we should be able to grasp 
them as well as the first. All that it wants is the long 
arm to give us the command of deposits that would 
astonish the world. Authors have become eminent 
according to their power to reach further than others 
out into the infinite atmosphere of thought which 
envelops them. 

Authors, like inventors, are rarely more than dis- 
coverers. If God, who is omniscient, sees all truth, 
and apprehends the relations of every truth to every 
other truth, all an author can do is, of course, to find 
out what God's thoughts are. And every age is cer- 
tain to find out the thought that is essential to it. When 
the world had exhausted Aristotle, and the wide school 
of philosophers who embraced him in their systems, 
Bacon, self-instituted, stepped before the world as its 
teacher. He came when he was wanted, and his age 
gave him audience, and took the better path which he 



Undeveloped Refources, 143 

pointed out to it. It was in the golden age of the 
drama — the age in which the drama was what it never 
was before, and will never be again — a great agent of 
civilization — that Shakspeare appeared. We call his 
plays creations, but surely they were not his. He no 
more than discovered them. The reason why they stir 
us so much is that God created them. His age wanted 
them, and he had the insight into the world of thought 
which enabled him to enter in and lead them out. The 
reason why we have not had any great dramatist since, 
is, that succeeding ages have not needed one. The 
great men of later ages have not recognized the drama 
as a want of their particular time. I am aware that 
there is nothing in this to feed human pride, but I do 
not recognize food for human pride as a want of any 
age. 

We are in the habit of talking of the old authors ; 
and we read them as if we supposed them wiser than 
ourselves. We try to feed on the thought which they 
discovered, but it is in the main very innutritions fod- 
der, and the world is learning the fact. We read and 
reverence old books less, and read and regard news- 
papers a great deal more. The thought which our 
own age produces is that which we are learning to 
prize most. We buy beautiful editions of Scott, but 
we read Dickens and Thackeray and Mrs. Stowe, in 
weekly and monthly numbers. Milton, in half-calf, 



144 Leffons in Life. 

stands upon the shelves of our library undisturbed, 
while we cut the leaves of " Festus ; " and Keats and 
Byron and Shelley are all pushed aside that we may 
converse with Longfellow and Mrs. Browning. It is 
not, perhaps, that the later are the greater, but, being 
informed with the spirit of the age in which we have our 
life, moving among the facts which concern us, and 
conscious of our want, they apprehend the true rela- 
tions of their age to the world of thought around them. 
They see where the sources of oil are exhausted, and 
bore for new deposits. It is a comfort to know that 
they can never bore in vain. 

We may be sure that literature will always be as 
fresh as it has been. It is possible that we may never 
have greater men than Shakspeare and Milton, and 
Dante and Goethe ; but there is nothing to hinder our 
having men just as great. Those who are to come will 
only bore in different directions, and find new deposits. 
Shakspeare and Milton were great writers, but the 
fields they occupied were their own. They do not 
resemble each other in any particular. Dante nd 
Goethe were great writers, but there are no points of 
resemblance between them. When Scott was issuing 
his wonderful series of novels, it seemed to his cotem- 
poraries, I suppose, that there was no field left for a 
successor ; yet Dickens, in the next generation, won as 
many readers and as much admiration as he, in a field 



Undeveloped Refources. 145 

whose existence Scott never suspected. Very different 
is the world of thought from the world of matter, in 
the fact that its deposits are found in no particular spot. 
The mind can go out in quest of thought in no direc- 
tion without reward ; and every man receives from his 
age motive and culture which peculiarly prepare him 
for the work of supplying its needs. There are some 
who seem to. think that the golden age of literature is 
past — that nothing modern is worthy of notice, and 
that it is one of the vices of the age that we discard so 
much the teachings of the literary fathers. But the 
world of thought is exhaustless, and we have only to 
produce a finer civilization than the world has ever 
seen, to secure, as its consummate flower, a literature 
of corresponding excellence. 

"What has been said of the world of matter and the 
world of thought, may be said, and is implied, of the 
world of men. We are accustomed to say that great 
emergencies make great men. But this is not true. 
Great men are always found to meet great emergen- 
cies : but God makes them, and leads them through a 
course of discipline which prepares them for their work. 
It is one of the remarkable facts of history, so patent 
that all have seen and acknowledged it, that to meet 
every great epoch a man has been prepared. I mean 
it in no irreverent or theological sense when I say that 
there has been a series of Christs, whose appearance 



146 Leffons in Life. 



has denoted the departure of old dispensations and the 
inauguration of new. Men have arisen who have torn 
down temples, and demolished idols, and swept away 
systems, and knocked off fetters, and introduced their 
age into a freer, better, and larger life ; and it will 
always be so while time shall last. Men will arise equal 
to the wants of their age wherever men are civilized. 
The causes which produce emergencies are the agents 
which educate men to meet them ; and nature is prod- 
igal of her material among men, as among the things 
made for his service. 

When, in the history of Christianity, it became 
necessary to re-assert and. emphasize the truth that 
" the just shall live by faith," Luther was raised up ; 
and nothing is more apparent to the student than that 
the age which produced him demanded him — that he 
fitted into his age, supplied its wants, and cut a new 
channel, through which the richest life of the world 
has flowed for centuries. He found his country tied 
up to formalism, scholasticism, and tradition ; and by 
strokes as remarkable for boldness as strength he set it 
free. Pie stands at the head of a great historical epoch, 
which was prepared to receive and crown him. In 
another field, we have, even in this day, a reformer 
whom his age has called for, and who will surely do in 
the world of art what Luther did in religion. ]STo one 
can read Ruskin, and mark Jiis enthusiasm, his splendid 



Undeveloped Refources. 147 

power, his earnestness, his love of truth, his reverence 
for nature, and above all, his love of God, without feel- 
ing that he has a great mission to fulfil in the world. 
I how myself in homage before this man, and acknowl- 
edge his credentials. He speaks with authority, and 
not as the common run of scribes, at all. Fearlessly 
he tears the mask away from conventionalism and pre- 
tension, sparing neither age nor nation, and scattering 
critics right and left 

"Like chaff from the threshing-floor." • 

It seems to me that the sight of this single, unsupport- 
ed man, plunging boldly into a fight with a whole 
world full of liars and lies, thrusting right and left, 
anxious only for the triumph of truth, and everywhere 
devoutly recognizing God and his glory, and Christ and 
his honor, as the ultimate end of true art, is one of 
the most striking and beautiful the w T orld has ever seen. 
Was there not need of him ? Had not art become su- 
perstitious and infidel and missionless ? ' Had it not 
faded to little more than the repetition of old inanities, 
traditional mannerisms, stereotyped lies ? Ruskin came 
to tell his age that art was doing nothing toward mak- 
ing the world better — that, instead of lifting the heart 
toward God, and enlarging the field of human sym- 
pathy, it was only ministering to the vanity of men — 
that nature was dishonored that men misrbt win the 



148 Leffons in Life. 

applause of vulgar crowds by falsehood and trickery. 
Nobly has he done and nobly is he still doing his work ; 
and the world is reading him. It matters not that crit- 
ics carp, and scold, and whine — the world is reading, 
and will regard him. The eternal truth of God and 
nature is on his side ; and we are to see, as I firmly be- 
lieve, resulting from his noble labors, a beautiful resur- 
rection of art from the grave in which its friends have 
laid it. It shall come forth, though now bound hand 
and foot, and be restored to the sisterhood whose hap- 
piness it is to serve and sit at the feet of Jesus Christ. 
But time and space would fail to give illustrations 
of the truth that God has always a man ready for an 
emergency. It is not necessary to speak of Washing- 
ton. It would not be wise, perhaps, to speak of the 
first Napoleon, because men differ so widely in their 
estimate of his work. But of the last ISTapoleon, it may 
be said that he furnishes one of the most notable in- 
stances the world has ever seen of a man prepared for 
his age. I suppose that no one believes that there is 
another man in existence who could have done for 
France, and would have done for Europe, under the 
circumstances, what Louis Napoleon has done. Never 
did the central figure of an elaborate piece of mosaic 
fit more nicely into its place, than did Louis Napoleon 
into the complicated affairs of his age. They were 
made for him, and he for them. 



Undeveloped Resources. 149 

Shall the world of matter never fail — shall the world 
of thought be exhaustless — shall men be found for all 
the emergencies of their race, and, yet, shall divine truth 
be contained in a nut-shell ? Must the human soul lack 
food — fresh food — because a generation long gone has 
decided that only certain food is fit for the human 
soul ? I believe that the Bible is a revelation of divine 
truth to men, and, believing this, I believe that its most 
precious deposits have hardly been touched. I believe 
that in it, there is special food prepared for all the w T ide 
variety of human souls, and that, as generation after 
generation passes away, new deposits will be struck, so 
rich in illuminating power that their discoverers will 
wonder they had never been seen before. I know that 
just before me, or somewhere before me, there is a gen- 
eration of men who will think less of being saved, and 
more of being worth saving, less of dogma, and more 
of duty, less of law, and more of love ; whose worship 
will be less formal, and more truthful and spiritual, and 
whose God will be a more tender and considerate father, 
and less a lawgiver and a judge. For such a genera- 
tion, there exists a deposit of divine truth almost un- 
known by Christendom. Only here and there have men 
gathered it, floating upon the surface. The great de- 
posit waits the touch of another age. 



LESSON XI. 

GREATNESS IN LITTLENESS. 

"This earth will all its dust and tears 
Is bo less his than yonder spheres; 
And rain-drops weak and grains of sand 
Are stamped by his immediate hand." 
Sterling. 

" There is a power 
Unseen, that rules the illimitable world ; 
That guides its motions, from the brightest star 
To the least dust of this sin-tainted world.'" 
Thomson. 

INFINITY lies below us as well as above us. There 
is as much essential greatness in littleness as in 
largeness. Mont Blanc — massive, ice-crowned, impe- 
rial — is a great work of nature ; yet it is only an aggre- 
gation of materials with which we are thoroughly fami- 
liar. It is only a larger mountain than that which lies 
within sight of my window. A dozen Monadnocks or 
Ascutneys or Holyokes, more or less, make a Mont 
Blanc, with glaciers and avalanches and brooding eter- 



Greatnefs in Littlenefs. 151 

nity of frost. Such greatness, though it impresses me 
much, is not beyond my comprehension. It can be 
reckoned by cubic miles. So with the sea : it is only 
an expanse of water larger than the river that winds 
through the meadows. It is great, but it is only an 
aggregate of numerable quantities that my eyes can 
measure, and my mind . comprehend. These are great 
objects, and they are great particularly because they 
are large. They are above me, and they lead me 
upward toward creative infinity. 

If I turn my eyes in the other direction, however, 
I lose myself in infinity quite as readily. If I pick up 
a pebble at the foot of Mont Blanc, and undertake the 
examination of its structure, — the elements which com- 
pose it, the relations of those elements to each other, 
the mode of their combination — I am lost as readily as 
I should be in following the footsteps of the stars. If 
I undertake to look through a drop of water, I may be 
arrested at first, indeed, by the sports and struggles of 
animal cular life ; but at length I find myself gazing 
beyond it into infinitude — using it as a lens through 
which the Godhead becomes visible to me. I can dis- 
sect from one another the muscles and arteries and 
veins and nerves and vital viscera of the human body, 
but the little insect that taps a vein upon my hand does 
it with an instrument and by the operation of machin- 
ery which are beyond my scrutiny. They belong to a 



152 LeiTons in Life. 

life and are the servants of instincts which I do not 
understand at all. 

These thoughts come to me, borne by certain mem- 
ories. I know a venerable gentleman of Buffalo — Dr. 
Scott — who did, and who still does, very great things 
in a very small way. At the age of seventy he became 
conscious of decaying power of vision. Being profes- 
sionally a physician and naturally a philosopher, he 
conceived the idea that the eye might be improved by 
what he denominated a series of " ocular gymnastics." 
He therefore undertook to exercise his eyes upon the 
formation of minute letters — working upon them until 
the organs began to be weary, and then, like a prudent 
man, resting for hours. By progressing slowly and 
carefully, he became, at last, able to do wonders in the 
way of fine writing, and also became able to read the 
newspapers without glasses. (Here's a hint for some 
clever Yankee — as good as a fortune.) ISTow, reader, 
prepare for a large story; but be assured that it is 
true, and that my hands have handled and my eyes 
seen the things of which I tell you. At the age of 
seventy-one, Dr. Scott wrote upon an enamelled card 
with a stile, on space exactly equal to that of one side 
of a three-cent piece, — The Lord's Prayer, the Apos- 
tles' Creed, the Parable of the Ten Virgins, the Par- 
able of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Beatitudes, the 
fifteenth Psalm, the one hundred and twentieth Psalm, 



Greatnefs in Littlenefs. 153 

the one hundred and thirty-third Psalm, the one hun- 
dred and thirty-first Psalm, and the figures " 1860." 
Every word, every letter, and every point, of all these 
passages was written exquisitely on this minute space ; 
and that old man not only saw every mark he made, 
but had the delicacy of muscular action and steadiness 
of nerve to form the letters so beautifully that they 
abide the test of the highest magnifying power. They 
were, of course, written by microscopic aid. 

Now who believes that it does not require more 
genius and skill to execute this minute work than it 
does to bore a Hoosac tunnel, or build a Victoria bridge, 
or put a dam across the Connecticut, or construct an 
Erie canal ? I do not speak of the relative importance 
of the great works and the small, but of the relative 
amount and quality of the power that is brought to 
bear upon them. In a very important sense the great- 
est thing a man can do is the most difficult thing he 
can do. The most difficult thing a man can do may 
not be the most useful, or in any sense the most im- 
portant ; but it will measure and show the limits of his 
power. Work grows difficult as it goes below a man, 
quite as rapidly as it does when it rises above him. It 
costs as much skill to make a dainty bit of jewelry as 
it does to carve a colossal statue. It actually costs 
more power to make the chain of gold that holds the 
former, than it does to forge the clumsy links by which 
7* 



154 Leffons in Life, 

the latter is dragged to its location. Thus, whether 
man goes down or up, he soon gets beyond the sphere 
of his power. The further he can carry himself in either 
direction the more does he demonstrate his superiority 
over the majority of men. The more difficult the task 
which he performs the further does he reach toward 
infinity. 

In the town of Waltham there is a manufactory of 
watches which I have examined with great interest. 
It is here undertaken to organize the skill which has 
been achieved by thousands of patient hands, and sub- 
mit it to machinery ; and it is done. Every thing is so 
systematized, and the operations are carried on with 
such exactness, that, among a hundred watches, cor- 
responding parts may be interchanged without embar- 
rassment to the machinery. The different parts are 
passed from hand to hand, and from machine to ma- 
chine, each hand and each machine simply doing its 
duty, and when from different and distant rooms these 
parts are assembled, and cunning fingers put them 
together, every wheel knows its place, and every pivot 
and every screw its home, though it be picked without 
discrimination from a dish containing ten thousand. 
Yet among these parts there are screws of which it 
takes one hundred and fifty thousand to make a pound, 
and shafts and bearings which are so delicately turned 
that five thousand shavings will only extend a lineal 



Greatnefs in Littlenefs 155 

inch along the steel. This is the way American watches 
are made, and this is the way in which the highest 
practicable perfection is reached in the manufacture 
of these pocket monitors. 

Here we have small work, organized, and great 
elaboration of related details. When Dr. Scott wrote 
his passages on the card, his work was very simple. He 
did only one thing — he made letters. When he had 
made letter after letter until the little space was filled, 
his work was done. It was not a part of some compli- 
cated and inter-dependent whole, related to a thousand 
other parts in other hands. I suppose it may be as 
delicate work to drill a jewel with a hair of steel, armed 
with paste of diamond-dust, as to write " Our Father" 
under a microscope ; but when the jewel has to be 
drilled with relation to the reception of a revolving 
metallic pivot, the process becomes very much nicer. 
So here are a hundred processes going on at the same 
time, in different parts of a building, all related to each 
other, each delicate almost beyond description, and 
effected with such precision that a mistake is so much 
an exception that it is a surprise. I have seen the 
huge steam engines at Scranton which furnish power 
for the blast of the furnaces there, and their magnitude 
and power and most impressive majesty of movement 
have made me tremble ; yet as works of man they are 
no greater than a Waltham watch. 



156 LefTons in Life. 



It seems to me that man occupies a position just 
half way between infinite greatness and infinite little- 
ness, and that he can neither ascend nor descend to 
any considerable degree without bringing up against a 
wall which shows where man ends and God begins. It 
seems, too, that that kind of human power which can 
reach down deepest into the infinite littleness, is more 
remarkable than that which rises highest toward the 
infinite greatness. It is a more difficult and a more 
remarkable thing to write the Lord's Prayer on a single 
line less than an inch long, than it would be to paint it 
on the face of the Palisades, upon a line a mile long, in 
letters the length of the painter's ladder. I have heard 
of a watch so small that it was set in a ring, and worn 
upon the finger ; and such a watch seems very much 
more marvellous to me than the engines of the Great 
Eastern. 

We are in the habit of regarding God as the author 
of all the great movements of the universe, but as hav- 
ing nothing to do directly with the minor movements. 
Mr. Emerson becomes equally flippant and irreverent 
when he speaks of a "pistareen Providence." We 
kindly take the Creator and upholder of all things under 
our patronage, and say, " it is very well for him to 
swing a star into space, and set bounds to the sea, and 
order the goings of great systems, and even to minis- 
ter to the lives of great men, but when it comes to 



Greatnefs in Littleneis. 157 

meddling with the little affairs of the daily life of a 
thousand millions of men, women, and children — 
pshaw ! He's above all that." 

Not so fast, Mr. Emerson! The real reason why 
you and all those who are like you do not believe in 
God's intimate cognizance and administration of human 
affairs is, that you cannot comprehend them. You have 
not faith enough in God to believe that he is able to 
maintain this knowledge of human affairs, this interest 
in them, and the power and the disposition to mould 
them to divine issues. You are willing to admit that 
God can do a few great things, but you are not willing 
to admit that he can do a great many' little things. It 
is well enough, according to your notion, for God to 
make a mastodon, or a megatherium, but quite undig- 
nified for him to undertake a mosquito or a horse-fly. 
It would not compromise His reputation with you were 
you to catch Him lighting a sun, or watching with 
something of interest the rise and fall of a great 
nation, but actually to listen to the prayer of a little 
child, and to answer that prayer with distinctness of 
purpose and definite exercise of power, would not, in 
your opinion, be dignified and respectable business for 
a being whom you are proud to have the honor of wor- 
shipping ! 

I do not know how these people who do not be- 
lieve in the intimate special providence of God can 



158 



Leffons in Life. 



believe in God at all. I can conceive how God could 
rear Mont Blanc, but I cannot conceive how He 
could make a honey bee, and endow that honey bee 
with an instinct — transmitted since the creation from 
bee to bee, and swarm to swarm — which binds it 
in membership to a commonwealth, and enables it 
to build its waxen cells with mathematical exactness, 
and gather honey from all the flowers of the field. 
It is when we go into the infinity below us that 
the infinite power and skill become the most evident. 
"When the microscope shows us life in myriad forms, 
each of which exhibits design ; when we contemplate 
vegetable life in its wonderful details ; when chemis- 
try reveals to us something of the marvellous processes 
by which vitality is fed, we get a more impressive sense 
of the power and skill of the Creator than we do when 
we turn the telescope toward the heavens. Yet Mr. 
Emerson would have us believe that the Being who 
saw fit to make all these little things, to arrange and 
throw into relation all these masses of detail, to paint 
the plumage of a bird, and the back of a fly, as richly 
as he paints the drapery of the descending sun, does 
not condescend to take practical interest in the affairs 
of men and women! My God, what blindness! Bird, 
bee, blossom — be my teacher. I do not like Mr. Em- 
erson's lesson. 

The logical sequence of disbelief in what Mr. Emer- 



Greatnefs in Littlenefs. 159 

son calls a " pistareen Providence " is a belief in pan- 
theism or polytheism. There is certainly nothing 
ridiculous in the faith that the Being who contrived 
and arranged, and adjusted the infinite littlenesses of 
creation, and ordained their laws, and who continues 
their existence, maintains an intimate interest in the 
only intelligent creatures he has placed in this world. 
The little bird that sings to me, the bee that bears me 
honey, the blossom that brings me perfume, all testify 
to me that He who created them will not neglect nor 
forget His own child. If I look up into the firmament, 
and send my imagination into its deep abysses, and 
think that further than even dreams can go, those 
abysses are strewn with stars; if I think of comets 
coming and going with the rush of lightning, and yet 
occupying whole centuries in their journey; or if I 
only sit down by the sea, and think of the waves that 
kiss other shores thousands of miles away, I am op- 
pressed by a sense of my own littleness. I ask the 
question whether the God who has such large things 
in His care, can think of me — a speck on an infinite 
aggregate of surface — a mote uneasily shifting in the 
boundless space. I get no hope in this direction ; but 
I look down, and find that the shoulders of all inferior 
creation are under me, lifting me into the very pres- 
ence of God. I find that God has been at work below 
me, in a mass of minute and munificent detail, by the 



160 



Leffons in Life. 



side of which my life is great and simple, and satisfy- 
ingly significant. 

So, if I may not believe in a "pistareen Provi- 
dence," I must make a God of the universe itself, or 
pass into the hands of many Gods the world's creation 
and governance. If the God that made the bee, and 
the ant, and the daisy, made me, then He is not above 
taking care of me, and of maintaining an interest in the 
smallest affairs of my life. The faith that lives in rea- 
son is never stronger than when it stands on flowers. 
There is not a fly that floats, nor a fish that swims, nor 
an animalcule that navigates its little drop of sea-spray, 
but bears a burden of hope to despairing humanity. 
"If God so clothe the grass which to-day is, and to- 
morrow is cast into the oven," then what, Mr. Em- 
erson ? 

This subject is a very large one, and I can present 
only one more phase of it. A great multitude — the 
larger part, in fact — of the human race are engaged in 
doing small work. It may be a comfort for them to 
know that the Almighty Maker of all things has done 
a great deal of the same kind of work, and has not 
found it unworthy or unprofitable employment. Let 
them remember that it is just as hard to do a small 
thing well as a large thing, and that the difficulty of a 
deed is the gauge of the power required for its doing. 
Let them remember that when they go down, they are 



Greatnefs in Littlenefs. 161 

going just as directly toward infinity as when they go 
up, and that every man who works Godward, works 
in honor. 

It was a very forcible reflection to which a visitor 
at Niagara Falls gave utterance, when he said that, 
considering the relative power of their authors, he did 
not regard the cataract as so remarkable a piece of 
work as the Suspension Bridge ; and it may be said 
with truth that there is no work within the power of 
man so small that God has not been below it in a 
work smaller and possibly humbler still, — certainly hum- 
bler when we consider the infinite majesty and the in- 
effable dignity of His character. My maid is too proud 
to go into the street for a pail of milk ; my God smiles 
upon me in flowers from the very gutter. My neigh- 
bor thinks it beneath him to till the soil, working with 
his hands, but the Being who made him, breathes upon 
that soil, and works in it, that it may bear food to keep 
human dignity from starving. There are men who set 
themselves above driving a horse, no part of which the 
King of the universe was above making. Ah ! human 
pride ! Alas ! human dignity ! I do not know what* 
to make of you. 



LESSON XII. 

EUKAL LIFE. 

"Going into a village at night, with the lights gleaming on each side of the 
street, in some houses they will be in the basement and nowhere else." 

Beeches. 

" The little God o' the world jogs on the same old way, 
And is as singular as on the world's first day. 
A pity 'tis thou shouldst have given 

The fool, to make him worse, a gleam of light from heaven ; 
He calls it reason, using it 
To be more beast than ever beast was yet. 
He seems to me, (your grace the words will pardon,) 
Like a long-legged grasshopper, in the garden, 
Forever on the wing, and hops and sings 
The same old song, as in the grass he springs." 

Goethe's Fattst. 

IT is a common remark that a railroad car is an ex- 
cellent place in which to study human nature ; but 
the particular phase of human nature which is usually 
presented there is not, I think, sufficiently attractive to 
engage a man who desires to maintain a good opinion 
of his race. I would as soon think of studying human 



Rural Life. 163 



nature in a pig-pen as in a railroad car. I do not like 
to study even my own nature there, for I find that the 
more I ride, the more selfish I become, and the more 
desirable it seems to me that I should occupy the space 
usually assigned to four men, viz. : two seats for my 
feet, and two for such other portions of my person as 
are not required for spanning the space between the 
sofas. It must be a matter of regret to most persons, 
I am sure, that they are not large enough to cover 
twice as many seats as they do, and thus drive those 
who travel with them into more close and inconvenient 
quarters. Whenever I witness an instance of genuine, 
self-sacrificing politeness in a railroad car, I become 
aware that there is at least one man on the train 
who has travelled very little. No ; when I travel I 
turn my observation upon things outside — upon the 
farms and streams, and mountains and forests, and 
towns and villages through which the train bears me. 
I am particularly interested in the faces of those who 
gather at the smaller stations to gaze at the passengers, 
get the papers, and feel the rush, for a single moment, 
of the world's great life. I love to listen to the smart 
remarks of some rustic wit in shirt-sleeves, who, if the 
train should happen to be behind time, intimates to the 
brakeman that the old horse didn't have his allowance 
of oats that morning, or commiserates the loneliness of 
the conductor of a train not crowded with passen- 



164 



LelTons in Life. 



gers, — all of which is intended for the ears of a village 
girl who stands in the door of the " Ladies' Room," 
with the tip of a parasol in her teeth, and a hat on her 
head that was jaunty last year. 

Riding into the country recently, I saw at one of 
these little stations a pair of young men, leaning 
against the station-house. They had evidently been 
waiting for the approach of the train, but they did not 
stir from their positions. They were young men whose 
life had been spent in severe and unremitting toil. 
Their hands were large, and coarse, and brown ; their 
faces and necks were bronzed ; their clothing was of 
the commonest material and pattern, and was old and 
patched besides ; and they had a hard look generally. 
There was the usual bustle about them, but they did 
not seem to mind it. At last, they started, and these 
are the words that one of them spoke : " Come, Bob, 
let's go over and see if we can't tuck away some of that 
grub." So both turned their backs upon the train, and 
upon me ; and as they went over to see-if they couldn't 
" tuck away some of that grub," I got a view of their 
heavy shoulders, and their shambling, awkward gait. 
A pair of old draft horses, going out in the morning to 
take their places in front of their truck, would not 
move more stiffly than those fellows moved. 

Now these young men taught me nothing, for I 
had seen many such before ; but through them I took 



Rural Life. 165 



a fresh and a very impressive glimpse into a style of 
life that abounds among the rural population of Amer- 
ica, and shows but feeble signs of improvement. These 
men, who, when they eat, only " tuck away grub," of 
course "go to roost" when they sleep. They call the 
sun " Old Yaller," naming him in honor of a favorite 
ox. When they undress themselves " they peel off," 
as if they were onions or potatoes ; and when they put 
themselves into their Sunday clothing, they " surprise 
their backs with a clean shirt." When they marry, 
they "hitch on," as if matrimony were a sled, and a 
wife were a saw-log. Every thing in their life is brought 
down to the animal basis, and why should it not be ? 
They labor as severely as any animal they own ; they 
are proud of their animal strength and endurance ; they 
eat, and work, and sleep, like animals, and they do 
nothing like men. Their frames are shaped by labor ; 
and they are only the best animals, and the ruling ani- 
mals, on their farms. As between the wives and chil- 
dren who live in their houses, and the horses and cattle 
that live in their barns, the latter have the easier time 
of it. 

Having brought every thing down to the animal 
basis in their homes and in their lives, their intercourse 
with other men will naturally betray the ideas upon 
which they live. They are usually very blunt men, 
who " never go round " to say any thing, but who blurt 



166 LefTons in Life. 



out what they have to say in a manner entirely regard- 
less of the feelings of others. They enter each other's 
houses with their hats on, and " help themselves " when 
they sit at each other's tables, and affect great con- 
tempt for the courtesies and forms of polite life. They 
are exceedingly afraid of being looked upon as " stuck 
up ; " and if they can get the reputation of being able 
to mow more grass, or pitch more hay, or chop and 
pile more wood, or cradle more grain, than any of their 
neighbors, their ambition is satisfied. There is no dig- 
nity of life in their homes. They cook and eat and live 
in the same room, and sometimes sleep there, if there 
should be room enough for a bed. There is no family 
life that is not associated with work, and no thought 
of any life that is not connected with bodily labor ; and 
if they sit down five minutes, either at home or at 
church, they go to sleep. Their highest intellectual ex- 
ercise is that which is called out by the process of 
swapping horses, and the selling of their weekly prod- 
uct of eggs and butter at the highest market price. 
They invariably call their wives — "the old woman," 
or "she;" and if they should stumble into saying, 
" my dear," in the presence of a neighbor, they would 
blush at being self convicted of unjustifiable politeness 
and unpardonable weakness. 

These men have learned to read, but they rarely 
read any thing, except the weekly newspaper, taken 



Rural Life. 167 



exclusively for the probate notices. The only books in 
their houses are the Bible and two or three volumes 
forced upon them at unguarded moments by book- 
agents, who made the most of internal wood-cuts, and 
external Dutch metal to place them in possession of the 
" History of the World," or the " Lives of the Presi- 
dents," or some other production equally extensive and 
comprehensive. There is no exhibition of taste about 
their dwellings. Every thing is brought down to the 
hard standard of use. If their wives should desire a 
border for flowers, they regard them as very silly, and 
look upon their attempts to " fix up things " as a great 
waste of labor. They never go out with their wives to 
mingle in the social life of their neighborhood; and if 
the wives of their neighbors come to spend an after- 
noon, they harness their horses, and drive off to attend 
to some distant business that will detain them until the 
women get away. It is useless to say to me that this 
is an extreme picture, for I know what I am writing 
about, and know that I am painting from the life. I 
know that there are hundreds of thousands of Ameri- 
can farmers whose life and whose ideas of life are cast 
upon these models. Some of these are as coarse and 
hard as I paint them, and others are only a little better. 
Such a farmer's boy is brought up to the idea that 
work is the grand thing in life. Work, indeed, is sup- 
posed by him to be pretty much all of life. It is sup- 



168 Leffons in Life. 

posed to spoil farmers to get any thing but work into 
their heads ; and scientific agriculturists will bear wit- 
ness that they have been obliged to fight the popular 
prejudices against "book farming" at every step of 
their progress. They will also testify that the improve- 
ments made in farming and in the implements of agri- 
culture have not been made by farmers themselves, but; 
by outsiders — mechanics, and men of science — who have 
marvelled at the brainless stupidity which toiled on in 
its old track of unreasoning routine, and looked with 
suspicion and discouragement upon innovations. The 
reason why the farmer has not been foremost in im- 
proving the instruments and methods of his own busi- 
ness, is, that his mind has been unfitted for improve- 
ment by the excessive labors of his body. A man 
whose whole vital energy is directed to the support of 
muscle has, of course, none to direct to the support of 
thought. A man whose strength is habitually exhaust- 
ed by bodily labor becomes, at length, incapable of 
mental exertion ; and I cannot help feeling that half of 
the farmers of the country establish insuperable obsta- 
cles to their own improvement by their excessive toil. 
They are nothing more than the living machines of a 
calling which so far exhausts their vitality that they 
have neither the disposition nor the power to improve 
either their calling or themselves. 

To a student or a literary man, it is easy to explain 



Rural Life. 169 



the necessity of the proper division of the nervous 
energies between the -mind and the body. Any student 
or literary man who has a daily mental task to do, will 
do it before he exercises his body to any great extent. 
If I wished to unfit my mind for a day of literary labor, 
I would use the hoe in my garden for an early hour in 
the morning. If I wished utterly to unfit a pupil for 
his daily task of study, I would put him through an 
exhausting walk before breakfast. The direction of all 
the nervous energies to the support of the muscular 
system, and the necessary draft upon the digestive and 
nutritive functions to supply the muscular waste, leave 
the mind temporarily a bankrupt. I have never seen 
a man who was really remarkable for acquired muscu- 
lar power, and, at the same time, remarkable for men- 
tal power. A man may be born into the world with 
a fine muscular system and a fine brain, and in early 
life his muscular system may have a fine development. 
Such a man may subsequently have a remarkable men- 
tal development, but this development will never be 
accompanied by large and regular expenditures of mus- 
cular power. If I wished to repress the mental growth 
and manifestation of a man, I would undertake to edu- 
cate him up to the point of lifting eight or ten kegs of 
nails. There is danger at first of overdoing our " mus- 
cular Christianity" — danger of getting more muscle 
than Christianity ; and there is a good deal more dan- 
8 



170 Leffons in Life. 

ger of overdoing our muscular intellectuality. The 
difference between the kind and amount of exercise 
necessary to produce a healthy machine and the kind 
and amount necessary to produce a powerful one, is 
very great. We are never to look for great intellec- 
tuality in a professor of gymnastics, nor to expect that 
the time will come when a man will not only walk a 
thousand miles in a thousand hours, hut compose a poem 
of a thousand lines at the same time. 

If the temporary diversion of the nervous energy 
from the brain have this effect, what must a permanent 
diversion accomplish ? It will accomplish precisely 
what is indicated by the look and language of our two 
young friends at the station-house. It will develop 
muscle for the uses of a special calling, and make ugly 
and clumsy men of those who should be symmetrical ; 
and at the same time it will repress mental develop- 
ment, and permanently limit mental growth — at least, 
so long as the mind shall be associated with the body. 
I suppose that every fecundated germ of human being 
is endowed with a certain possibility of development — 
a complement of vital energy which will be expended 
in various directions, according to the circumstances 
which may surround it and the will of its possessor. If 
it shall be mainly expended upon the growth and sus- 
tentation of muscle, it will not be expended upon the 
growth and sustentation of mind ; and I have no hesi- 



Rural Life. 171 



tation in saying that it is an absolute impossibility for a 
man who engages in hard bodily labor every day to be 
brilliant in intellectual manifestation. The tide of such 
a man's life does not set in that direction. An hour- 
glass has in it a definite quantity of sand ; and when I 
turn it over, that sand falls from the upper apartment 
into the lower ; and while it occupies that position it 
will continue to fall until the former is exhausted and 
the latter is filled. Moreover, it will never take its 
place at the other end of the instrument, until it is 
turned back. It is precisely thus with a human con- 
stitution. The grand vital current moves only in one 
direction, and when it is moving toward muscle it is 
not moving toward mind, and when it is moving tow- 
ard mind it is not moving toward muscle. This fact 
is illustrated sufficiently by the phenomena of digestion. 
After a man has eaten a hearty dinner, he becomes 
dull, even to drowsiness or perfect sleep. Why ? Sim- 
ply because the tide of nervous energy sets towards 
digestion, and there is not enough left to carry on men- 
tal or voluntary muscular operations. 

A resident of a city riding into the country, espe- 
cially if he be an intellectual man, and engaged in intel- 
lectual pursuits, will be thrilled by what he sees around 
him. The life of the farmer, planted in the midst of 
so much that is beautiful, having to do with nature's 
marvellous miracles of germination and growth, moving 



172 Leffons in Life. 

under the open heaven with its glory of sky and me- 
teoric change, and accompanied by the songs of birds 
and all characteristic rural sights and sounds, will seem 
to him the sweetest and the most enviable that falls to 
human lot. But the hard-working farmer sees nothing 
of this. What cares he for birds, unless they pull up 
his corn ? What cares he for skies, unless he can make 
use of them for drying his hay, or wetting down his 
potatoes? The beautiful changes of nature do not 
touch him. His sensibilities are deadened by hard 
work. His nervous system is all imbedded in muscle, 
and does not lie near enough to the surface to be reach- 
ed by the beauty and music around him. All he knows 
about a daisy is that it does not make good hay ; and 
he draws no appreciable amount of the pleasure of his 
life from those surroundings which charm the sensibili- 
ties of others. 

We are in the habit of regarding the farming pop- 
ulation of the country as the most moral and religious 
of any, yet if we look at them critically, we shall find 
that their piety is of a negative, rather than a positive 
character. They are men in the first place who have 
very few temptations, either from without or from 
within. There are no professional tempters around 
them to lure them into the more seductive paths of 
sin. The woman whose steps take hold on hell does 
not pass their doors ; the gambler spreads no snares 



Rural Life. 173 



for them ; no gilded palace invites them to music and 
intoxicating draughts ; they are not maddened by am- 
bition ; and they have no vanity that leads them to de- 
grading and ruinous display. If they are little assailed 
from without, they are not more moved toward vice from 
within. The fact that their vital energies are all expend- 
ed upon labor relieves them from the motives of temp- 
tation. Men whose muscles are overworked have no 
vitality to expend upon vices. The devil cannot make 
much out of a man who is both tired and sleepy. If we 
inquire of the ministers who have charge of rural par- 
ishes, they will usually tell us that an audience of me- 
chanics is better than an audience of farmers, and that 
the miscellaneous audience of a city is better than either. 
It is impossible for men who have devoted every bodily 
energy they possess to hard labor during the waking 
hours of six days, to go to church and keep brightly 
awake on the seventh. Country ministers will also 
admit that they have in their parishes less help in social 
and conference meetings than the pastors of city par- 
ishes, and that no great movements of benevolence 
ever originate in, or are carried on by, rural churches. 
As a matter of course, life cannot have much dig- 
nity or much that is characteristically human in it 
unless it be based upon active intellectuality, genuine 
sensibility, a development of the finer affections, and 
positive Christian virtue. When a man is a man, he 



174 Leffons in Life. 

never " tucks in grub." When a man lies down for 
rest and sleep he does not " go to roost." To a man, 
marriage is something more than " hitching on," and a 
dirty shirt is a good deal more of a " surprise" to a 
man's back than a clean one. There is no doubt about 
the fact that a life whose whole energies are expended 
in hard bodily labor is such a life as God never intended 
man should live. I do not wonder that men fly from 
this life and gather into the larger villages and cities, 
to get some employment which will leave them leisure 
for living. Life was intended to be so adjusted that 
the body should be the servant of the soul, and always 
subordinate to the soul. It was never meant by the 
Creator that the soul should always be subordinate to 
the body, or sacrificed to the body. 

I am perfectly aware that I am not revealing pleas- 
ant truths. We are very much in the habit of glorify- 
ing rural life, and praising the intelligence and virtue 
of rural populations ; and if they believe us, they cannot 
receive what I write upon this subject with pleasure. 
But the question which interests these people most is 
not whether my statements are pleasant but whether 
they are true. Is the philosophy sound ? Are the facts 
as they are represented to be ? Does a severe and con- 
stant tax upon the muscular system repress mental 
development, and tend to make life hard and homely 
and unattractive ? Is this the kind of life generally 



Rural Life. 175 



which the American farmer leads ? Is not the American 
farmer, generally, a man who has sacrificed a free and 
full mental development, and all his finer sensibilities 
and affections, and a generous and genial family and 
social life, and the dignities and tasteful proprieties of 
a well-appointed home, to the support of his muscles ? 
I am aware that there are instances of a better life than 
this amoug the farmers, and I should not have written 
this article if those instances had not taught me that 
this everlasting devotion to labor is unnecessary. There 
are farmers who prosper in their calling, and do not 
become stolid. There are farmers who are gentlemen 
— men of intelligence — whose homes are the abodes 
of refinement, whose watehwarcl is improvement, and 
whose aim it is to elevate their calling. If there be a 
man on the earth whom I honestly honor it is a farmer 
who- has broken away from his slavery to labor, and 
applied his mind to his soil. 

Mind must be the emancipator of the farmer. 
Science, intelligence, machinery — these must liberate 
the white bondman of the soil from his long slavery. 
When I look back and see what has been done for the 
farmer within my brief memory, I am full of hope for 
the future. The plough, under the hand of science, is 
become a. new instrument. The horse now hoes the 
corn, digs the potatoes, mows the grass, rakes the hay, 
reaps the wheat, and threshes and winnows it ; and 



176 



LefTons in Life. 



every day adds new machinery to the farmer's stock, 
to supersede the clumsy implements which once bound 
him to his hard and never-ending toil. "When a farmer 
begins to use machinery and to study the processes of 
other men, and to apply his mind to farming so far as he 
can make it take the place of muscle, then he illumin- 
ates his calling with a new light, and lifts himself into 
the dignity of a man. If mind once gets the upper 
hand, it will serve itself and see that the body is prop- 
erly cared for. Intelligent farming is dignified living. 
For a farmer who reads and thinks, and studies and 
applies, nature will open the storehouse of her secrets, 
and point the way to a life full of dignity and beauty, 
and grateful and improvable leisure. 



LESSON XIII. 

KEPOSE. 

Peace, greatness best becomes ; calm power doth guide 
With a far more imperious stateliness 
Than all the swords of violence can do, 
And easier gains those ends she tends unto." 

Daniel. 

"When headstrong passion gets the reins of reason, 
The force of nature, like too strong a gale, 
For want of ballast oversets the vessel."' 

HlGGONa. 

"Give me that man 
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts, 
As I do thee." Shakspeke. 

MRS. FLUTTER BUDGET was at church last 
Simdajr. She always is at church; and she 
never forgets her fan. I have known her for many- 
years, and have never known her to be in church with- 
out a fan in her hand, and some article upon her per- 
son that rustled constantly. Her black silk dress is 
death to devotion over the space of twenty feet on all 
8* 



178 Leffons in Life, 

sides of her. She fixes the wires in the bonnets of her 
little girls, then takes their hats off entirely, then wipes 
their noses, then shakes her head at them, then makes 
them exchange seats with each other, then finds the 
text and the hymns for them, then fusses with the 
cricket, and then fans herself unremittingly until she 
can see something else to do. During all this time, and 
throughout all these exercises, the one article of dress 
upon her fidgety person that has rustle in it, rustles. 
It chafes against the walls of silence as a caged bear 
chafes, with feverish restlessness, against the walls of 
his cell ; and as if the annoyance of one sense were not 
sufficient, she seems to have adopted a bob-and-sinker 
style of trimming, for hat and dress, and hair and 
cloak, and every thing that goes to make up her exter- 
nals. Little pendants are everywhere — little tassels, and 
little balls, and little tufts — at the end of little cords ; 
and these are all the time bobbing up and down, and 
trembling, and threatening to bob up and down, like — 

"The one red leaf, the last of its clan 
That dances as often as dance it can, 
Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 
On the topmost bough that looks up at the sky. " 

Any person who sits near Mrs. Flutter Budget, or un- 
dertakes to look at her during divine service, loses all 
sense of repose, and all power of reflection. The most 
solemn exercises in which the mind engages cannot be 



Repofe. 179 

carried on with a fly upon the nose, and any teasing of 
a single sense, whether of sight, or sound, or touch, is 
fatal to religious devotion, I presume that if the pas- 
tor wishes to find the most sterile portion of his field, 
he needs only to ascertain the names of those who oc- 
cupy pews in the vicinity of this lively little lady. Her 
husband died two years ago, of sleeplessness, and a 
harassing system of nursing. 

The Flutter Budgets are a numerous family in 
America. They are not all as restless as Madame, but 
the characteristics of the blood are manifest among 
them all. They never know repose; and, what is 
worse than this, they dread if they do not despise it. 
They are immense workers — not that they do more 
work, and harder than their neighbors, but they make 
a great fuss about it, and are always at it. They rise 
early in the morning, and they sit up late at night; 
and they do this from year's end to year's end, whether 
they really have any thing to do or not. They cannot 
sit still. They have an unhealthy impression that it is 
wrong for them not to be " doing something " all the 
time. Nothing in the world will make them so uncom- 
fortable and so restless as leisure. Mrs. Flutter Budget 
could no more sit down without knitting-work, or a 
sock to darn, in her hands, than she could fly. As she 
has many times remarked, she would die if she could 
not work. To her, and to all of her name and charac- 



180 LelTons in Life. 

ter, constant action seems to be a necessity. The crav- 
ing of the smoker for his pipe or cigar, the incessant 
hankering of the opium-eater for his drug, the terrible 
thirst of the drunkard for his cups — all these are legiti- 
mate illustrations of the morbid desire of the Budgets 
for action or motion. The man who has the habit of 
using narcotics is not more restless and unhappy with- 
out his accustomed stimulus, than they are witb noth- 
ing to do. In truth, I believe the desire for action 
may become just as morbid a passion of the soul as 
that which most degrades and demoralizes mankind. 

If I were called upon to define happiness, I could 
possibly give no definition that would shut out the 
word repose. I do not mean by this that no person 
can be happy except in a state of repose, but I mean, 
rather, that no man can be happy to whom repose is 
impossible. The highest definition of happiness would 
probably designate the consciousness of healthy powers 
harmoniously employed as among its prime elements ; 
but there can be no happiness that deserves its name 
without the consciousness of powers that are able to 
subside from harmonious action into painless rej^ose. 
I know a little girl who plays out of doors at 
night as long as she can see, and who, when called 
into the house, takes up a book with restless greed 
for mental excitement, and then begs to be read to 
sleep after she has been required to put down her 



Repofe. 181 

book and go to bed. She would be called a happy 
child by those who see her playing among her mates, 
yet it is easy to perceive that her happiness is limited 
to a single attitude and condition of body and mind. 
A happier child than she is one who can enjoy open- 
air play, and then quietly sit down at her mother's 
side and enjoy rest. That is an inharmonious and un- 
healthy state of mind which chafes with leisure ; and 
he is an unhappy man who cannot sit down for a mo- 
ment without reaching for a newspaper, or looking 
about him for some quid for his morbid mind to chew 
upon. So I count no man truly happy who cannot 
contentedly sit still when circumstances release his 
powers from labor, and who does not reckon among 
the rewards of labor a peaceful repose. 

No ; Mrs. Flutter Budget is not a happy Avoman ; 
and, as I have intimated before, she seriously interferes 
with the happiness and the spiritual prosperity of those 
about her. "When she can find nothing to do, then she 
worries. Those children of hers are worried nearly to 
death. If, in their play, they get any dirt upon their 
faces, they are sent immediately to make themselves 
clean. If they soil their clothes, they are shut up until 
reduced to a proper state of penitence. They are kept 
out of all draughts of air for fear of a cold ; and if 
they should take cold, why, they must take medicine 
of the most repulsive character as a penalty. If they 



182 Leffons in Life. 



cough out of the wrong corner of their mouths, she 
suspects them of croupy intentions; and if they 
venture, at some unguarded moment, on a cuta- 
neous eruption, they are immediately charged with 
the measles, or accused of small-pox. If they quietly 
sit down for a moment of repose, she apprehends 
sickness, and stirs them about to shake it off. Even 
sleep is not sacred to her, for if she finds a flushed 
face among the harassed little slumberers, she wakes 
its owner to make affectionate inquiries. Her husband, 
as I have already stated, died two years ago. She 
worked upon his nervous system to such an extent 
that he was glad to be rid of the world, and of her. I 
think a man would die, after awhile, with constantly 
looking at the motion of a saw-mill. The jar of a loco- 
motive makes the toughest iron brittle at last ; and the 
wear and tear of a restless wife are beyond the strong- 
est man's endurance. 

I have noticed that persons who have influence 
upon the minds of others, maintain constantly a degree 
of repose. I do not mean that those have most influ- 
ence who use their powers sparingly, but that a certain 
degree, of mental repose — or what may possibly be called 
imperturbableness — is necessary to influence. Mrs. Flut- 
ter Budget always talks in a hurry, and talks of a thou- 
sand things, and is easily excited. Her neighbor, care- 
fully avoiding the causes which ruffle her, and preserv- 



Repofe. 183 

ing the poise of her faculties, insists on her point 
quietly, and carries it. The repose of equanimity is a 
charm which dissolves all opposition. The mind which 
shows itself open to influences from every quarter, and 
is swayed by them, is not its own master. The mind 
that never rests is invariably full of freaks and caprices. 
The mind that has no repose shows its dependence and 
its lack of self-control. There cannot go out of such a 
mind as this a positive influence, any more than there 
can go forth from a candle a steady light, when it 
stands flickering and flaring in the wind, having all it 
can do to keep its flame from extinction. There must 
be that repose of mind which springs from conscious 
self-control and consciousness of the power of self-con- 
trol, under all ordinary circumstances, before a man 
can hope to have influence of a powerful character 
upon the minds about him. The driver of a coach-and- 
six, with all the ribbons in his hands, and a thorough 
knowledge of his horses and his road, sits upon his box 
in repose ; and that repose inspires me with confidence 
in him ; but if he should be constantly on the look-out 
for some trick, and constantly examining his harnesses, 
and constantly fussy and uneasy, I should lose my con- 
fidence in him, and wish I were in anybody's care 
but his. 

We do not need to be taught that a restless mind 
is not a reliable mind. There is an instinct which tells 



184 Leffons in Life. 

us this. There can be no reliableness of character 
without repose. If I should wish to take a ride, and 
two horses should be led before me to choose from, I 
would take the one that stands still, waiting for his bur- 
den and his command, rather than the one that occu- 
pies the road and his groom with his caracoling and 
curveting and other signs of restlessness. I should be 
measurably sure that one would bear me through my 
journey safely and speedily, and that the other would 
either throw me, or wear himself out, and so fail of 
giving me good service. Saint Peter was a restless 
man — an impatient man. He was always the most im- 
pulsive, and the most ready to act, as the servant of 
the high priest had occasion to remember ; but he both 
lied and denied his Lord. It was John reposing upon 
the breast of Jesus, who most drew forth the Lord's 
affection. Martha, worrying about the house, cum- 
bered with much serving, chose a part inferior to that 
of Mary who reposed at the feet of Jesus. It is only 
in repose that the powers of the mind are marshalled 
for great enterprises and for progress. It is in repose, 
when passion is sleeping and reason is clear-eyed, that 
the military chieftain marks out his campaign and ar- 
ranges his forces. He is a poor commander who 
throws his troops into the field, and rights without or- 
der, or struggles for no definite end ; and there are 
multitudes of men who throw themselves into life with 



Repofe. 185 

an immense splutter, and fight the fight of life with a 
great deal of noise, but who never make any progress, 
because they have never drawn upon repose for a plan. 
Repose is the cradle of power. It is the fashion to 
say that great men are men of great passions, as if 
their passions were the cause rather than the concomi- 
tant of their greatness. Great elephants have great 
legs, but the legs do not make the elephants great. 
Great legs, however, are required to move great ele- 
phants, and wherever we find great elephants, we find 
great legs. Small men sometimes have great passions, 
and these passions may so far overcome them that they 
shall be the weakest of the weak. The possession of 
great passions is often a disadvantage to weak men 
and strong men alike, because they furnish so many 
assailable points for outside forces. A fortress may be 
very strongly built, but if its doors are open, and 
scaling ladders are run permanently down from its 
walls for the accommodation of invading forces, its 
strength will be of very little practical advantage. 
Great passions are oftener the weak, than the strong 
points of great men. Now I do not believe it possible 
for a man to exercise a high degree of power upon the 
hearts and minds of others, and, at the same time, be 
under the influence of any variety of passion. A man 
cannot be the shivering subject of an outside force, act- 
ing upon him through his passions, and at the same 



186 Lefifons in Life. 

time a centre of effluent power. Action and passion 
are opposed to each other ; and when one has posses- 
sion of the soul the other is wanting. They involve 
two distinct attitudes of the mind, as truly as do 
thanksgiving and petition. 

The world often finds fault with great men be- 
cause they are cold; but they could not be great men 
if they were not cold. A physician is often preferred 
by a family or patient because he is " so sympathizing," 
as they call it. They forget that a physician is neces- 
sarily untrustworthy in the degree that he is sympa- 
thetic with his patients. A physician may be thoroughly 
kind, and out of his kindness there may grow a gentle 
manner which seems to spring from sympathy ; but I 
say unhesitatingly that in the degree by which a phy- 
sician is sympathetic with his patients, is he unfitted 
for his work. A dentist who feels, in sympathy, the 
pain that he inflicts upon a child, is unfitted to perform 
his operation. The surgeon who sensitively sympa- 
thizes with a man whose diseased or crushed limb it 
has fallen to his lot to remove, has lost a portion of his 
power and skill, and has become a poorer surgeon for 
his sympathy. Physicians themselves show that they 
understood this when a case for medical or surgical 
treatment occurs in their own families. If their wives 
or their children are sick, they cannot control their 
sympathies ; and the moment they are aware of this, 



Repofe. 187 

they lose all confidence in themselves. They cannot 
reduce the fracture of a child's limb, or prescribe for a 
wife lying dangerously ill, because their sympathies are 
so greatly excited that their judgment is good for noth- 
ing. In other words, they are in an attitude or condi- 
tion of passion — they are moved and wrought upon by 
outside forces, to such a degree that they cannot act. 

If an orator rise in his place, and show by the agita- 
tion of his nerves, his broken sentences, and his choked 
utterances, that emotion is uppermost in him, he has 
no more power upon his audience than a baby. We 
pity his weakness, or we sympathize with him ; but he 
cannot move us. He is a mastered man, and until he 
can choke down his passion he cannot master us. A 
man rises in an audience in a state of furious excite- 
ment, and fumes, and yells, and gesticulates, but he 
only moves us to pity, or disgust, or laughter. His 
passion utterly deprives him of power. We call Mr. 
Gough an actor, as he undoubtedly is ; and we pretend 
to be disgusted with him for simulating every night, 
for a hundred nights in succession, the emotions which 
move us. We forget that if Mr. Gough should really 
become the subject of the passions which he illustrates, 
he would lose his power upon us, and kill himself be- 
sides. He takes care never to be mastered, and takes 
care also that all the machinery which he uses shall 
contribute to his mastery of us. I do not deny that 



188 Leffons in Life. 

passion may be made tributary to the power of men. 
Oil is tributary to the power of machinery by lubricat- 
ing its points of friction ; and warmth, by bringing its 
members into more perfect adjustment; but if the 
machinery were made to wade in oil, or were heated 
red bot, oil and heat would be a damage to it. 

I repeat the proposition, then, that repose is the 
cradle of power. The man who cannot hold his pas- 
sions in repose — in perfect repose — can never employ 
tbe measure of his power. These " cold men," as the 
world calls them, are tbe men who move and control 
their race. But it is not necessary to cling to great 
men for tbe illustration of my subject. To say that a 
Christian philanthropist should not be a sympathetic 
man would be to say that he should not be a man at 
all ; but nothing is more certain than that if a man 
should surrender himself to his sympathies it would kill 
him. In a world where sin and its bitter fruits abound 
as they do in this, where little children cry for bread, 
and whole races are sunk in barbarism, and villainy 
preys upon virtue, and the innocent suffer in the place 
of tbe guilty, and sickness lays its hand upon multi- 
tudes, and pain holds its victims to a life-long bondage, 
and death leads throngs daily to the grave, and leaves 
other throngs wild with grief, a sensitively sympathetic 
man, surrendering himself to all the influences that ad- 
dress him, would lose all power to help the distressed, 



Repofe. 



189 



or even to speak a word of comfort. We are to ap- 
prehend the woes of others through our sympathies, 
and to hold those sympathies in such repose that all 
the power of our natures will be held ready for, and 
subject to, intelligent ministry. The woman who 
faints at the sight of blood is not fit for a hospital. 
The man who grows pale at hearing a groan, will not 
do for a surgeon. If we mean to do any thing in this 
world for the good of men, we must first compel our 
sympathies and our passions into repose. 

That which is true of power in this matter is true 
of judgment. It is a widely bruited aphorism that " all 
history is a lie," and this aphorism had its birth in the 
fact that historians become, as it were, magnetized by 
the characters with which they deal. A man who 
writes the life of Napoleon finds himself either sympa- 
thizing with him, or roused into antipathy by him. In 
short, he becomes the subject of a "passion, wrought 
upon him by the character which he contemplates and 
undertakes to paint ; and from the moment this pas- 
sion takes possession of him, he becomes unfitted to 
write an impartial and reliable word about him. All 
positive historical characters have all possible historical 
portraits, simply because the writers are subjects of 
passion. It is because no man can write of positive 
characters without being the subject of an influence 
from them, that no man can be an impartial historian, 



190 LefTons in Life. 

and that all history must necessarily be a lie. If ever 
a perfect history shall be written, it will be written by 
one whose passions are under entire control, and kept 
in a condition of profound repose — who will look at a 
historical character as he would upon an impaled bee- 
tle in an entomological collection. A man is no com- 
petent judge of a character, either in history or in life, 
with which he strongly sympathizes. I have known 
many a man utterly unfitted to read the proofs of the 
villainy of one to whom he had surrendered his sym- 
pathies. A woman in love is a very poor judge of 
character. She can see nothing but excellence where 
others see nothing but shallowness and rottenness. 

Once more, there is no dignity without repose. A 
restless, uneasy man, can never be a dignified man. 
There can be no dignity about a man or a woman who 
fumes, and frets, and fusses, and is full of freaks and 
caprices. Dignity of maimers is always associated with 
repose. Mrs. Flutter Budget always enters a drawing- 
room as if she were a loaded doll, tossed in by the 
usher, and goes dodging and tipping about to get her 
centre of gravity, without getting it. Her queenly 
neighbor comes in as the sun rises — calmly, sweetly, 
steadily, and all hearts bow to her dignified coming. 
What would an Archbishop be worth for dignity, who 
should be continually scratching his ears, and brushing 
his nose, and crossing and re-crossing his legs, and 



Repofe. 191 

drumming with his fingers? Who would not deem 
the ermine degraded by a chief justice who should be 
constantly twitching about upon his bench ? It is a 
fact that has come under the observation of the least 
observant, that the moment a man surrenders himself 
to his passions he loses his dignity. A fit of anger is as 
fatal to dignity as a dose of arsenic to life. A fit of 
mirthfulness is hardly less fatal. So it is in repose, and 
particularly in the repose of the passions, that we find 
the happiness, the influence, the power, and the dignity 
of our life. Let us cultivate repose. 



LESSON XIV. 



THE WATS OF CHAEITT. 



"The Holy Supper is kept indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need ; 
Not that which we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare : 
Who bestows himself, with his alms feeds three,- 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

Lowell. 

" It may not be our lot to wield 
The sickle in the ripened field ; 
Nor ours to hear on summer eves, 
The reaper's song among the sheaves ; 
Yet, when our duty's task is wrought, 
In unison with God's great thought, 
The near and future blend in one, 
And whatsoe'er is willed is done." 

Whittiee. 



I HAVE come to entertain very serious doubts 
about my "orthodoxy" on the subject of doing 
good. If I know my own motives, I certainly have a 
desire to do good ; but this desire is yoke fellow with 
the perverse wish to do it in my own way. I do not 
feel myself inclined to accept the prescriptions of those 



The Ways of Charity. 193 

who have taken out patents for various ingenious pro- 
cesses in this line of effort. My attention has just been 
attracted to this subject, by the perusal of a long story, 
which must be not far from the one hundred and nine- 
ty-ninth that I have read during the past twenty years, 
all tipped with the same general moral. A good- 
natured lady, in easy circumstances, and of benevolent 
impulses, is appealed to by a poor man in the kitchen. 
She feeds him, gives him clothes, sends him away re- 
joicing, and feels good over it. The man comes again 
and again, tells pitiful stories, excites her benevolence 
of course, and secures a reasonable amount of addi- 
tional plunder. Months pass away; and being out 
upon a walk one pleasant afternoon, and finding herself 
near the poor man's residence, the fair benefactress 
calls upon him. She finds the wife (who was reported 
dead) very comfortable indeed, and the destitute fam- 
ily of four children reduced to a single fat and saucy 
baby, and the poor liar himself smelling strongly of 
rum. Then come the denouement, and a grand tableau: 
lady very much grieved and astonished — wife, who has 
known nothing of her husband's tricks, exceedingly be- 
wildered — fuddled husband, blind with rum and re- 
morse, owns up to his meanness and duplicity. He 
found (as he confessed) that he could work upon the 
lady's sympathies, got to lying and couldn't stop, and, 
finally, felt so badly over the whole operation, that he 
' 9 



194 Leffons in Life. 

took to drink to drown his conscience! Moral: Wo- 
men should not help poor people without going to see 
them, and finding out whether they lie. 

ISTow that woman did exactly as I should have done, 
under the same circumstances. In the first place, I 
should never have had the heart to doubt a man who 
carried an honest face, and was cold, hungry, and ragged. 
I should have regarded his condition as a claim upon 
my charity. In the second place, I should have had no 
time to call upon his family, and satisfy myself with re- 
gard to their circumstances ; and in the third place, I 
should have felt very delicate about putting direct 
questions to them if I had. The same story tells inci- 
dentally of one of these men who do good in the 
proper way. He visited a house which presented all the 
signs of poverty; but the angel of mercy was too 'cute 
to be taken in ; so he walked up stairs. Every thing 
presenting there the same aspect of abject poverty 
that prevailed below, the angel of mercy looked around 
him, and discovered a ladder leading to the garret. 
The angel of mercy " smelt a rat," and mounted the 
ladder. In the garret he found half a cord of wood, 
and any quantity of goodies for the table. Another 
denouement and tableau. Moral : as before. If the 
story has taught me any thing, it is that it is my duty 
to question every beggar that comes to my door, visit 
his house, explore it from cellar to garret, and satisfy 



The Ways of Charity. 195 

myself of the truth or falsehood of his representations. 
Otherwise, my charity goes for nothing, and I do my 
beggar an absolute unkindness. In other words, while 
the law holds every man innocent until he is proved to 
be guilty, charity holds every man guilty until he is 
proved to be innocent. 

It has become the fashion in certain circles to decry 
that benevolence which sits at home in slippers, and 
gives its money without seeing where it goes ; but it 
is forgotten that the money dispensed in slippers was 
earned in boots, and that the man who has money to 
give, has usually so much business on hand that he can 
make no adequate personal examination of the cases 
which are referred to his charity. I can never forget 
Mr. Dickens' Cheeryble Brothers, who were so very 
much obliged to a friend for calling upon them, and 
telling them of the circumstances of a poor family. It 
was taken as a great personal kindness when they were 
informed how and where they could relieve want and 
distress. They had no genius for going about and 
looking up cases of charity, but their hearts leaped at 
the opportunity to do good. They did their work in 
their counting-room, and had no time and no talent for 
visiting those whom they benefited ; but who would 
question either the genuineness or the judiciousness of 
their benevolence ? The applications for aid made at 
the doors of our dwellings come oftener to the mis- 



196 LdTons in Life. 



tresses of those dwellings than to the masters; and 
these mistresses, four times in five, are women with 
the care of children on their hands, or household duties 
which demand almost constant attention. If a beggar 
come to the door, they are grateful for the opportu- 
nity to afford relief; but they have no time to visit 
another quarter of the town, to learn whether their 
charities have been well bestowed, nor do they with- 
hold their charities through fear of being imposed 
upon. 

In my judgment, the character and circumstances 
of a man determine his office in the work of charitable 
relief. I know there are some persons who have a pe- 
culiar natural adaptation to the work of visiting the 
subjects of sickness and of need. Their presence and 
their sympathy are grateful to those to whom they de- 
light to minister. They are masters and mistresses of 
all those thrifty economies which enable them to man- 
age for the poor. They have genuine administrative 
talent in this particular department. They are cheer- 
ful and active, and sympathetic and ingenious; and 
they can do more for a poor, discouraged family with 
ten dollars than others can do with fifty. I do not 
suppose that these people are one whit more benevo- 
lent than those whose purses are always open to the 
poor, and who at the same time would feel very awk- 
ward upon a visit of charity, and would make the fam- 



The Ways of Charity. 197 

ily visited feel as awkward as themselves. The poor 
we have always with us; and every man and woman 
who possesses means for their relief owes a duty to 
them which is to be discharged in the most efficient 
way. If I have money, and do not feel that I am the 
proper person to look after the details of its dispensa- 
tion, I will put it into the hands of one more compe- 
tent to the business, and I will rationally conclude that 
I have done my duty. In the mean time, if a man come 
to my door, and ask for the supply of his immediate 
necessities, he shall not be turned empty away because 
I do not happen to have the means at hand for verify- 
ing his story. 

I know that there are multitudes of tender-hearted 
women — women of abounding benevolence and sensi- 
tive conscience — who are troubled upon this subject. 
They have a desire to do good, and to do it in the 
right way; but, somehow, they find it impossible to 
do it according to the views of the story- writers. 
They are any thiug but rugged in health, perhaps, or 
they have a dependent family of young children 
around them, or the care of their dwellings absorbs 
their time. They fail to find the opportunity to visit 
the poor, or they do not feel themselves adapted to 
the office ; and still they carry about with them the 
uncomfortable suspicion that they are meanly shrinking 
from duty. My thought upon this point is that my 



198 Leffons in Life. 

duties never conflict with one another, and that if I 
can do good in one way better than another, then that 
is my way to do good. I shall not permit the story- 
writers to prescribe for me, nor shall I allow them to 
make me uncomfortable. 

There is a class of men and women in all Protes- 
tant communities who think it a very neat thing to do 
good at random. They sow broadcast of cheap seed, 
content to reap nothing at all, and pleasantly disap- 
pointed if they find here and there a stalk of corn to 
reward their sowing. They do not prepare their 
ground, they do not cultivate it at all, but they sow, 
hoping that in some open place a seed may fall and 
germinate. Some of these people regard this method 
of doing good as a kind of holy stratagem — a Christian 
trick — which takes the devil at a disadvantage. I once 
knew a kind old gentleman who did a business that 
brought him considerably into contact with rough and 
profane persons ; and as he wished to do something for 
them, he kept his pockets filled with little printed cards 
entitled "The Swearer's Prayer;" and whenever an 
oath came out, the utterer was immediately presented 
with this card with a little story on it, and a statement 
that " to swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise." I 
very well remember hearing the old gentleman say that, 
though he had given away hundreds of these cards, 
he had never learned that one of them had done 



The Ways of Charity. 199 

any good. I do not wonder at it. It was a sneaking 
way of doing good, or of trying to. If the old man had 
remonstrated personally with these swearing fellows, 
and told them that their habit was both vulgar and 
wicked, does any one suppose that the result would 
have been so unsatisfactory ? He had not pluck enough 
to do this ; so he gave them a card, and they either 
threw it in his face or threw it away. But then, the 
cards didn't cost much ! 

I have been much interested in watching a car-load 
of passengers, while receiving each from the hands of a 
professional distributor a religious tract. All have re- 
ceived the gift politely, in deference to the motive 
which prompted, or was supposed to prompt, its be- 
stowal ; yet I have never failed to perceive that polite- 
ness was really taxed in the matter. ISTow let me be 
candid, and confess that I was never pleasantly im- 
pressed by being presented with a tract in a railroad 
car. This fact cannot be attributed to any lack of dis- 
position to contemplate religious subjects ; but there is 
something which tells me that it is improper and in- 
delicate for any man to come into a public vehicle, and 
thrust upon me and upon my fellow-passengers a set of 
motives and opinions on religion which may or may 
not accord with my own and theirs — -just as it happens. 
I think the natural action of the mind is to brace itself 
against influences sought to be sprung upon it in this 



200 Leffons in Life. 



manner ; and I am yet to be convinced that this indis- 
criminate and wholesale distribution of religious tracts 
in railroad stations and public conveyances is not doing, 
and has not done, more harm than good. I know that 
multitudes of men — not vicious — are disgusted with it, 
and offended by it, and that there is something — call 
it what you may — in the emotions excited by the pre- 
sentation of a tract under such ill-chosen circumstances, 
which counteracts any good influence it was intended 
to produce. A gentleman will receive a tract politely, 
and read it or not according to his whim ; but it will 
be very apt to disgust him with the style of Christian- 
ity which it represents. 

I am aware that the secretary and the agents of 
the tract societies make very encouraging reports of 
the results of their operations. I am always interested 
in these details, and do not discredit at all the state- 
ments which they make. Nay, I am convinced that in 
certain departments of their effort they are successful 
in doing much good. I believe that their noble army 
of colporteurs, going from lonely neighborhood to 
neighborhood, and carrying with them an unselfish, 
devoted life, and the living voice of prayer, exhorta- 
tion, and counsel, win many souls to Christian virtue. 
I am willing to acknowledge, further, that here and 
there a tract, chance-sown, may fall into ground ready 
to receive it ; but I have a right to question whether 



The Ways of Charity. 201 

the same outlay of effort and money, applied directly 
in other fields, would not bring very much larger re- 
turns. My point is that in all efforts to do good, in 
this way, appropriateness of time and place is always 
to be consulted. I once took my seat in a dentist's 
chair to have an operation performed upon my teeth. 
If I remember correctly, an ugly fang was to be re- 
moved, — at any rate, pain was involved in the matter ; 
but no sooner was the dentist's arm around my head, 
and his instrument in my mouth, than the well-meaning 
and zealous operator began to question me upon the 
subject of personal religion. E"ow it seemed quite as 
bad to undertake to propagate Christianity at the point 
of a surgical instrument, as it would be to win prose- 
lytes by the sword ; and the utter incongruity of the 
two operations disgusted me. At any rate, I changed 
my dentist. I felt like the man who found upon his 
landlady's table an article of 'butter that was incon- 
veniently encumbered with hair, and who informed her 
that he had no objection to hair, but would prefer to 
have it served upon a separate dish. 

A good many years ago, I read a Sunday-school 
book entitled, if I remember correctly, "Walks of 
Usefulness." It represented a man going out into the 
street, and " pitching into " every person he met with, 
upon the subject of religion, or starting a conversation 
and immediately giving it a spiritual twist. I thought 
9* 



202 Leftons in Life. 

then that he was a remarkably ingenious man — a won- 
derful story-teller, to say the least of him. I am in- 
clined to think now that he romanced a little. Every 
operation was so neatly done, and turned out so well, 
that I really suspect it was pure fiction. I have this to 
say, at any rate, that if he did and said what he pro- 
fessed to have done and said, under the circumstances 
which he described, he owed it to the politeness of 
those whom he addressed that he was not dismissed 
with a decided rebuff, and told to go about his business. 
" A word fitly spoken, how good it is ! " Ah yes! how 
very good it is ! Christian zeal is no excuse for bad 
taste, nor is Christian effort exempt from the laws of 
fitness and propriety which attach to human effort of 
other aims in other fields. If I wish to reach a man's 
mind upon any important subject, and circumstances 
do not favor me, I wait for circumstances to change, or 
I pave my way to his mind by a series of carefully- 
adjusted efforts. Abrupt transitions of thought and 
feeling, and violent interruptions of the currents of 
mental life and action, are never favorable to reflection. 
If I wish to cheer a man who is bowed to the earth in 
grief for the loss of a companion, I will not break in 
upon his mourning with a lively tune upon a fiddle. 
If I wish to attract him to a religious life, I will not in- 
terrupt the flow of his innocently social hours by some 
terrible threat or warning. In truth, I know of nothing 



The Ways of Charity. 203 

that calls for more care, or nicer discrimination, or 
choicer address, than a personal attempt to move an 
irreligious mind in a religious direction. The word of 
gold should always have a setting of silver. 

There seems to be a prevalent disposition in the 
religious world to do good by indirection and strata- 
gem. If a man can reach one mind by scattering ten 
thousand tracts, the result is more grateful than it 
would be if that mind were reached by direct personal 
effort without any tracts ; and it makes a larger and 
more interesting show in the reports. This disposition 
is manifest in the matter of charitable fairs. The wo- 
men of a religious society will make up a batch of 
little-or-nothings, freeze a few cans of ice cream, hire a 
hall, and advertise a sale. We all go, and buy things 
that we do not want, with a good-natured and gallant 
disregard of prices, and the footings of receipts are 
published in the newspapers. The charitable women 
feel pleasantly about it, and think that they have done 
a great deal of good at a small cost, without remem- 
bering that all the money they have made has cost 
somebody the amount of the declared figures. It seems 
to be a great deal pleasanter to get possession of the 
money in this way, than it would be to obtain it by a 
general subscription. They forget that all they have 
done is to obtain a subscription by a graceful and at- 
tractive stratagem, and that the motives which they 



204 Leffons in Life. 

have pocketed with the money would not stand the 
test of a scrupulous analysis. The main point seems to 
be to get the money, and do the good with the least 
possible sense of sacrifice ; as a man goes to a charitable 
ball, and pays two dollars for the privilege of dancing 
all night, in order to give a shilling of profits to the 
widow and fatherless without feeling the burden of the 
charity. 

Of all the means of doing good, I know of none so 
repulsive as that which is purely professional. I think 
we do not have so much of this in these days as our 
fathers had. Our pastors are more thoroughly our 
companions and friends than they used to be. They 
do not assume to be our dictators and censors as they 
did in the earlier days of Puritanism. The idea of the 
regular parochial visit is essentially changed. But I 
know clergymen, even now, who visit the house of 
mourning professionally, and give their professional 
consolation in a professional way, and depart feeling 
that they have faithfully performed their professional 
duty. I know clergymen who go round from house to 
house with their professional inquiries, and do up any 
quantity of professional work in a day. The family 
come in, (those who do not run away,) and take seats 
around the room, and answer questions, and listen to a 
prayer, and then they bid their pastor a good afternoon 
with a sense of relief, and go about their business again, 



The Ways of Charity. 205 

while he pushes on to his next parishioner, and repeats 
the professional task. It is all a dry and unfruitful 
formality on the part of the families visited, and a pro- 
fessionally-discharged duty on the part of the pastor, 
and a pitifully-ridiculous caricature of the visit of a 
religious teacher to his disciples every way. What 
shall be said of an interview of which the pastor's part 
consisted of these words : "Very late spring — Hem! " 
(looking out of the window) — " who is building that 
barn ? — potatoes seem to be getting along very well ; " 
(turning to a member of the family) — " Jane, how do 
you enjoy your mind ? " A spiritual frame that could 
stand such a transition as that, without taking a fatal 
cold, must be based upon a very sound constitution, 
and toughened by frequent repetition of the process. 

I suppose there will always be obtuse men in the 
pastoral office — men who know no way of getting into 
a sensitive soul except by knocking in the door and 
walking in with their boots on ; but all such men are 
out of their place. The souls of an average people — 
tied to the tasks of life, burdened by care, oppressed by 
routine, and depressed in many instances by bodily 
weakness — need sympathy more than counsel, and en- 
couragement and inspiration more than a solemn, pro- 
fessional catechetical probing of their religious state. 
But I think, as I have already said, that the world is 
improving in this matter. Our pastors are more social, 



206 LefTons in Life. 



more facile, more appreciative of the fact that, in all 
their personal intercourse with their people, they must 
win love and give sympathy if they would do good in 
the line of their profession. 

So much in the vein of criticism ; and if I am asked 
what guide a man shall have in the matter of doing 
good in the world, I shall answer : a loving, honest, 
and brave heart, and a mind that judges for itself. 
The heart that loves its fellow-men will move its possessor 
to do good ; and the mind that thinks and judges for 
itself will decide in what direction its efforts ought to 
be made. If a man be moved to do good, he will do 
it, and his heart will lead him in the right direction. 
Under a mistaken sense of duty, inculcated by incom- 
petent counsellors, men find themselves in fields of be- 
nevolent action to which they are very poorly adapted; 
and the world is full of these blunders ; but an hon- 
estly-loving heart and an ordinarily clear brain, that 
nobody has been allowed to meddle with and muddle, 
will tell a man where he belongs and what he ought to 
do. If a man have a gift for ministering to the sick, 
let him do it. If he have a gift for dealing personally 
with the poor, let him do that. If he have a gift for 
making money, and none for properly applying his 
charities, let him hand his money to those who are 
competent to dispense it. I do not believe that many 
loving hearts, coupled with unsophisticated judgments, 



The Ways of Charity. 207 

are engaged in indiscriminate and random efforts to 
act for religions ends npon the minds they meet with. 
I believe that with all such hearts and judgments there 
is connected a sense of that which is fit and proper in 
time, place, and circumstance, so that wherever they 
strike they leave their mark. I believe that such 
hearts and judgments will scorn to do that by indirec- 
tion which they can do better directly, and that if it be 
fit and proper for them to offer reproof to a man, they 
will do it by the brave word of mouth, and not sneak 
up to him and put a card or a tract into his hand. I 
believe that men with such hearts and judgments 
would prefer making a subscription directly to a chari- 
table object, to making one indirectly by paying double 
price for articles they do not want. And last, I think 
that pastors, with such hearts and judgments, are not 
at all in danger of becoming coldly professional in their 
noble duties. A life in any sphere that is the expres- 
sion and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, 
taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to 
be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction. 



LESSON XV, 



MEN OF ONE IDEA. 



" Cultivate the physical exclusively, and you have an athlete or a savage ; 
the moral only, and you have an enthusiast or a maniac; the intellectual only, 
and you have a diseased odrlity— it may be a monster. It is only by wisely 
training all three together that the complete man can be formed." 

Samuel Smiles. 



JfT^HEN the heats of summer have dried up the 
streams, and cataracts only trickle and drip, 
and the dams of brooks and rivers cease to pour the 
arching crystal from their lips, I have always loved to 
explore the forsaken water-courses. An imprisoned 
fish, a shell with rainbow lining, a curiously-worn rock, 
a strangely-tinted and grotesquely-fashioned stone — 
these are always objects of interest. Then to sit down 
upon a ledge that has been planed off by ice, and 
smoothed by the tenuous passage of an ocean's palpi- 
tating volume, and watch the shrunken stream slipping 
around its feet, and hear the gurgle of the faintly-going 



Men of One Idea. 209 

water, and grow so drowsy with the song that it breaks 
at last into surprising articulations, and talks and 
laughs, and shouts and sings — ah ! this, indeed, is en- 
chantment ! There are few men, I suppose, so fortu- 
nate as to have enjoyed a country breeding, who do not 
recall scenes like this, — who do not remember a half- 
holiday, at least, spent in the bed of a summer stream, 
and at the feet of scanty cataracts, making fierce at- 
tacks on water snakes, watching lizards lying among 
the stones of an old raceway, creeping up, hat in hand, 
to a gauze-winged devil's needle that shivered on a 
sunny point of rock, and looked as if it might be the 
ghost of a humming-bird, starting to mark the sudden 
flight and hear the chattering cry of the king-fisher as 
he darted through the shadows and disappeared, and 
noting the slim-legged wagtail, racing backward and 
forward upon the border of the stream. 

Among the objects of interest very often, if not al- 
ways, to be found at the feet of dams and cataracts, 
are what people call "pot-holes." They are round 
holes worn in the solid rock by a single stone, kept in 
motion by the water. Some of them are very large 
and others are small. "When the stream becomes dry, 
there they are, smooth as if turned out by machinery, 
and the hard, round pebbles at the bottom by which 
the curious work was done. Every year, as the dry 
season comes along, we find that the holes have grown 



210 Leffons in Life. 



larger and the pebbles smaller, and that no freshet has 
been found powerful enough to dislodge the pebbles 
and release the rock from their attrition. Now if a 
man will turn from the contemplation of one of these 
pot-holes, and the means by which it is made, and seek 
for that result and that process in the world of mind 
which most resemble them, I am sure that he will find 
them in a man of one idea. In truth, these scenes that 
I have been painting were all recalled to me by looking 
upon one of these men, studying his character, and 
watching the effect of the single idea by which he was 
actuated. " There," said I, involuntarily, " is a moral 
pot-hole with a pebble in it ; and the hole grows larger 
and the pebble smaller every year." 

I suppose it is useless to undertake to reform men 
of one idea. The real trouble is that the pebble is in 
them; and whole freshets of truth are poured upon 
them, only with the effect to make it more lively in its 
grinding, and more certain in its process of wearing 
out itself and them. The little man who, when ordered 
by his physician to take a quart of medicine, informed 
him with a deprecatory whimper that he did not hold 
but a pint, illustrates the capacity of many of those who 
are subjects of a single idea. They do not hold but one, 
and it would be useless to prescribe a larger number. 
In a country like ours, in which every thing is new and 
everybody is free, there are multitudes of self-consti- 



Men of One Idea. 211 

tuted doctors, each of whom has a nostrum for curing 
all physical and moral disorders and diseases, — a patent 
process by which humanity may achieve its proudest 
progress and its everlasting happiness. The country is 
full of hobby-riders, booted and spurred, who imagine 
they are leading a grand race to a golden goal, forget- 
ful of the truth that their steeds are tethered to a 
single idea, around which they are revolving only to 
tread down the grass and wind themselves up, where 
they may stand at last amid the world's ridicule, and 
starve to death. 

Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word 
that proceeds out of the mouth of God, whether 
spoken through nature or revelation. There is no one 
idea in all God's universe so great and so nutritious 
that it can furnish food for an immortal soul. Variety 
of nutriment is absolutely essential, even to physical 
health. There are so many elements that enter into 
the structure of the human body, and such variety of 
stimuli requisite for the play of its vital forces, that it 
is necessary to lay under tribute a wide range of na- 
ture ; and fruits and roots and grain, beasts of the field, 
fowls of the air, and fish of the sea, juices and spices 
and flavors, all bring their contributions to the perfec- 
tion of the human animal, and the harmony of its func- 
tions. The sailor, kept too long upon his hard biscuit 
and salt junk, degenerates into scurvy. The occupant 



212 LeiTons in Life. 



of the Irish hovel who lives upon his favorite root, and 
sees neither bread nor meat, grows up with weak eyes, 
an ugly face, and a stunted body. It is precisely thus 
with a man who occupies and feeds his mind with a 
single idea. He grows mean and small and diseased 
with the diet. The soul bears relation to such a wealth 
of truth, such a multitude of interests cluster about it, 
it has such variety of elements — as illustrated by its 
illimitable range of action and passion — it touches and 
receives impressions from all other souls at such an in- 
finite variety of points, that it is simply absurd to sup- 
pose that one idea can feed it, even for a day. 

A mind that surrenders itself to a single idea be- 
comes essentially insane. I know a man who has dwelt 
so long upon the subject of a vegetable diet that it has 
finally taken possession of him. It is now of such im- 
portance in his eyes that every other subject is thrown 
out of its legitimate relations to him. It is the constant 
theme of his thought — the study of his life. He ques- 
tions the properties and quantities of every mouthful 
that passes his lips, and watches its effects upon him. 
He reads upon this subject every thing he can lay his 
hands on. He talks upon it with every man he meets. 
He has ransacked the whole Bible for support to his 
theories ; and the man really believes that the eternal 
salvation of the human race hinges upon a change of 
diet. It has become a standard by which to decide the 



Men of One Idea. 213 

validity of all other truth. If he did not believe that 
the Bible was on his side of the question, he would dis- 
card the Bible. Experiments or opinions that make 
against his faith are either contemptuously rejected or 
ingeniously explained away. Now this man's mind is 
not only reduced to the size of his idea, and assimilated 
to its character, but it has lost its soundness. His rea- 
son is disordered. His judgment is perverted — de- 
praved. He sees things in unjust and illegitimate rela- 
tions. The subject that absorbs him has grown out of 
proper proportions, and all other subjects have shrunk 
away from it. I know another man— a man of fine 
powers — who is just as much absorbed by the subject 
of ventilation ; and though both of these men are re- 
garded by the community as of sound mind, I think 
they are demonstrably insane. 

If we rise into larger fields, we shall find more no- 
table demonstration of the starving effect of the enter- 
tainment of a single idea. Scattered throughout the 
country we shall find men who have devoted themselves 
to the cause of temperance, or abstinence from intoxi- 
cating liquors. Here is a grand, a humane, a most 
worthy and important cause ; yet temperance as an 
idea is not enough to furnish food for a human soul. 
Some of these men have only room in them for one 
idea, and, so far as they are concerned, it might as well 
be temperance as any thins;, though it is bad for the 



214 Leffons in Life. 

cause ; but the majority of them were, at starting, men 
of generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is 
pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind. They 
dwelt upon their idea — they lived upon it for a few 
years — and then they " showed their keeping." If I 
should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, big- 
oted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would 
look among those who have made temperance the 
specialty of their lives — not because temperance is bad, 
but because one idea is bad; and the men afflicted 
by this particular idea are numerous and notorious. 
They have no faith in any man who does not believe 
exactly as they do. They accuse every man of unwor- 
thy motives who opposes them. They permit no liberty 
of individual judgment and no range of opinion ; and 
when they get a chance, they drive legislation into the 
most absurd and harmful extremes. Men of one idea 
are always extremists, and extremists are always nui- 
sances. I might truthfully add that an extremist is 
never a man of sound mind, 

The whole tribe of professional agitators and mis- 
called reformers are men of one idea. That these men 
do good, sometimes directly and frequently indirectly, 
I do not deny ; and it is equally evident that they do a 
great deal of harm, the worst of which, perhaps, falls 
upon themselves. Like the charge of a cannon, they 
do damage to an enemy's fortifications, but they burn 



Men of One Idea. 215 

up the powder there is in them, and lose the ball. Like 
blind old Samson, they may prostrate the pillars of a 
great wrong, but they crush themselves and the Philis- 
tines together. The greatest and truest reformer that 
ever lived was Jesus Christ ; but ah ! the difference 
between his broad aims, universal sympathies, and over- 
flowing love, and the malignant spirit that moves those 
who angrily beat themselves to death against an insti- 
tuted wrong ! As an illustration, look at those who 
have been the prominent agitators of the slavery ques- 
tion in this country for the last twenty years. Are 
they men of charity ? Are they Christian men ? Is 
not invective the chosen and accustomed language of 
their lips ? Do they not follow those against whom 
they have opposed themselves, whether for good cause 
or otherwise, into their graves with a fiendish lust of 
cruelty, and do they not delight to trample upon great 
names and sacred memories ? Are they men whom we 
love ? Do we feel attracted to their society ? Teach- 
ers of toleration, are they not the most intolerant of all 
men living ? Denouncers of bigotry, are they not the 
most fiercely bigoted of any men we know ? Preachers 
of love and good will to men, do they not use more 
forcibly than any other class the power of words to 
wound and poison human sensibilities ? 

It is not the quality of the idea which a man enter- 
tains that kills him. Freedom for every creature that 



216 LelTons in Life. 

bears God's image — the breaking of the rod of the op- 
pressor and letting the oppressed go free — this is a 
good idea. It is so great, so broad, so full, so flowing, 
that a world of men might gather around it for a time as 
they do around Niagara, and grow divine in its majestic 
music and the vision of the wreath of light which heav- 
en holds above it. If a man undertake to live upon a 
single idea, it really makes very little difference to him 
whether that idea be a good or a bad one. A man 
may as well get scurvy on beans as beef. I suppose a 
diet of potatoes would be quite as likely to support life 
comfortably as a diet of peaches. It is because the 
human soul cannot live upon one thing alone, but de- 
mands participation in every expression of the life of 
God, that it will dwarf and starve upon even the grand- 
est and most divine idea. 

The agitators and reformers are very ready to see 
the dwarfing effect 6f a single idea or a single range of 
ideas upon the Christian ministry, and a large number 
of Christian men. I admit the accuracy of their obser- 
vations in this matter, and, admitting this, I can cer- 
tainly ask the question whether they hope to escape 
depreciation when the Christian idea — the divinest of 
all — is insufficient of itself to make a man, and fill him, 
and give him all desirable health and wealth and 
growth. As I have touched upon this point, I may 
say that it is coming to be understood that a man or a 



Men of One Idea. 



217 



minister, in order to be a Christian, must be something 
else- — that Christianity received into nature and life is 
only one of the elements of manhood — and that a man 
may become starved and mean and bigoted and essen- 
tially insane by feeding exclusively upon religion. 
What means the vision of these sapless, sad, and sanc- 
timonious Christians — these poor, thin, stingy lives — 
but that all ideas save the religious one have been shut 
out from them ? Is it not notorious that a minister 
who has fed exclusively upon religion is a man without 
power upon the hearts and minds of men ? Is it not 
true that he has most efficiency in pulpit ministration 
who has the largest knowledge of and sympathy with 
men, the broadest culture, and the widest acquaintance 
with all the ideas that enter as food and motive into 
human life ? Is it not true that in the life-long, absorb- 
ing anxiety and carefulness of a multitude of souls to 
secure their salvation, those souls are constantly be- 
coming less valuable, and thus — to use the language of 
the market — less worth saving ? 

I cannot fail, however unwilling, to see much that 
is dry and stiff and unlovely in the style of Christianity 
around me. It has no attraction for me. I do not 
like the people who illustrate it ; and the reason is, not 
that they have got too much of Christianity, but that 
they have not got enough of any thing else. Flour is 
good, but flour is not bread. If I am to eat flour, I 
10 



218 Leffons in Life. 

must eat it as bread ; and either milk or water must 
be used to make it bread. If a little milk is used, the 
bread will be dry and heavy and hard. If a good deal 
is used, the flour will be transformed into a soft and 
plastic mass, which will rise in the heat, and come to 
my lips a sweet and fragrant morsel. Christianity is 
good, but it wants mixing with humanity before it will 
have a practical value. If only a little humanity be 
mixed with it, the product will be dry and tasteless ; 
but if it be combined with the real milk of humanity, 
and enough of it, the result will be a loaf fit for the 
tongues of angels. No : the divinest idea that has yet 
been apprehended by the human mind is not enough 
for the human mind. That which God made to be fed 
by various food cannot be fed with success or safety by 
a single element. We cannot build a house of dry 
bricks. It takes lime and sand and water in their 
proper proportions to hold the bricks together. 

This selection of a single idea from the great world 
of ideas to which the mind is vitally related, and mak- 
ing it food and drink, and motive and pivotal point of 
action, and supreme object of devotion, is mental and 
moral suicide. It makes that a despotic king which 
should be a tributary subject. It enslaves the soul to 
a base partisanship. It is right to make money, and it 
is right to be rich when wealth is won legitimately ; 
but when money becomes the supreme object of a 



Men of One Idea. 219 

man's life, tlie soul starves as rapidly as the coffers are 
filled. It is right to be a temperance man and an anti- 
slavery man, and an advocate of any special Christian 
reform ; but the effect of adopting any one of these 
reforms as the supreme object of a man's pursuit, never 
fails to belittle him. One of the most pitiable objects 
the world contains is a man of generous natural im- 
pulses grown sour, impatient, bitter, abusive, unchari- 
table, and ungracious, by devotion to one idea, and 
the failure to impress it upon the world with the 
strength by which it possesses himself. Many of these 
fondly hug the delusion to themselves that they are 
martyrs, when, in fact, they are only suicides. Many 
of these look forward to the clay when posterity will 
canonize them, and lift them to the glory of those who 
were not received by their age because they were in 
advance of their age. So they regard with contempt 
the pigmy world, wrap the mantles of their mortified 
pride about them, and lie down in a delusive dream of 
immortality. 

Whether the effect of devotion to a single idea be 
disastrous or otherwise to the devotees, nothing in all 
history is better proved — nothing in all philosophy is 
more clearly demonstrable — than the fact that it is a 
damage to the idea. If I wished to disgust a commu- 
nity with any special idea, I would set a man talking 
about it and advocating it who would talk of nothing 



220 Leffons in Life. 

else. If I wished to ruin a cause utterly, I would sub- 
mit it to the advocacy of one who would thrust it into 
every man's face, who would make every other cause 
subordinate to it, who would refuse to see any objec- 
tions to it, who would accuse all opponents of unworthy 
motives, and who would thus exhibit his absolute slavery 
to it. Men have an instinct which tells them that such 
people as these are not trustworthy — that their senti- 
ments and opinions are as valueless as those of children. 
If they talk with a pleasant spirit, we good-naturedly 
tolerate them; if they rant and scold and denounce, we 
hiss them if we think it worth while, or we applaud them 
as we would the feats of a dancing bear. If they say 
devilish things in a heavenly sort of way, and clothe 
their black malignities in silken phrases, we hear them 
with a certain kind of pleasure, and take our revenge 
in despising them, and feeling malicious towards the 
cause they advocate. It would kill us to drink Cologne 
water, but the perfume titillates the sense, and so we 
sprinkle it upon our handkerchiefs. 

JSTo great cause can be forwarded by the advocacy 
of men who have no character, and no man can devote 
himself to an idea without the loss of character. When 
a man comes forward to promulgate an idea, we inquire 
into his credentials. How large a man is this ? How 
broad are his sympathies ? How wide is his knowl- 
edge ? What relation does he bear to the great world 



Men of One Idea. 221 

of ideas among which this is only one, and very likely 
a comparatively unimportant one ? Is he so weak as 
to be possessed by this idea, or does he possess it, and 
entertain a rational comprehension of its relations to 
himself and the community ? I know that multitudes 
of good men have been so disgusted with the one-sided, 
partisan character of the advocates of special ideas and 
special reforms, that they w^ould have no association 
with them. "We have only to learn that a man can see 
nothing but his pet idea, and is really in its possession, 
to lose all confidence in his judgment. When in a 
court of justice a man testifies upon a point that 
touches his personal interests or feelings or relations, 
we say that his testimony is not valuable — not reliable. 
It decides nothing for us. We say that the evidence 
does not come from the proper source. We do not expect 
candor from him, for we perceive that his interests are 
too deeply involved to allow sound judgment and ut- 
terly truthful expression. It is precisely thus with all 
professional agitators and reformers — all devotees of 
single ideas. They are personally so intimately con- 
nected with their idea — have been so enslaved by their 
idea — are so interested in its prosperity — that they are 
not competent to testify with relation to it. 



LESSON XVI 

SHYING PEOPLE. 



" It is jealousy's peculiar nature 
To swell small things to great ; nay, out of naught 
To conjure much : and then to lose its reason 
Amid the hideous phantoms it has formed." 

Young. 

" I will not shut me from my kind ; 
And, lest I stiffen into stone, 
I will not eat my heart alone, 
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind." 
Tennyson. 

" Fear is the virtue of slaves ; but the heart that loveth is willing." 

Longfellow. 

READEK, did you ever drive a horse that had the 
mean habit of shying ? If so, then yon will re- 
member how constantly he was on the lookout for ob- 
jects that would frighten him. He would never wait 
for the bugbear to show its head ; but he conjured it 
up at every point. Every hair upon his sides seemed 
transformed into an eye ; and there was not a colored 



Shying People. 223 



stone, nor a stick of wood, nor a bit of paper, nor a 
small dog, nor a shadow across the road, nor any thing 
that introduced, variety into his passage, that did not 
seem to be endowed with some marvellous power of 
repulsion. First he dodged to the right, after having 
foreseen the evil from afar, and wrought himself up to 
a fearful pitch of sidelong excitement; and. then he 
dodged to the left, havmg been surprised into passing 
a cat without alarm ; and so, dodging to the right and 
left, he has half worried the life out of you. Being 
constantly on guard, and always watching for objects 
of alarm, and suspicious of dangers in disguise, he has 
had no difficulty in maintaining a condition of perma- 
nent fright, which has worked itself off in spasms of 
shying. To a man who has driven a horse up to a 
locomotive without danger or fear, such an animal as 
this seems to be unworthy of the name of a horse ; and 
to one who has read of the spirit and fearlessness of the 
war-horse, a shying horse seems to be the most con- 
temptible of his race. 

Well, I have met shying men, and I meet them 
upon the sidewalk almost every day. I have watched 
them from afar, and known by their eyes and a certain 
preparatory nervousness of body, that they would 
" shy " at me. I have been conscious, however, that 
there was nothing in me to shy at. I have had no pis- 
tols in my pocket, and no Bowie knife under my coat- 



224 Leffons in Life. 

collar. I have been innocent of any intention to leap 
upon and throttle them. I have had no purpose to 
trip their heels by a sudden " flank movement," and 
not even the desire to knock their hats off. Indeed, I 
have felt toward them a degree of friendliness and kind- 
ness which I would have been very glad to express, 
had they afforded me an opportunity ; but they were 
shying men by nature, or by habit, or by whim. So 
far as I have been able to ascertain the causes of their 
infirmity, it is the result of a suspicion that they are 
not quite as good as other people, and a belief that 
other people understand the fact. Far be it from me 
to deny that their suspicions touching themselves are 
well-grounded ; but that is no reason why other peo- 
ple should not speak to them politely. There is a class 
of men and women who are always looking out for, 
and expecting, slights from those whom they suppose 
to be their superiors. They get a suspicion that a cer- 
tain man feels above them ; so when they pass him in 
the street, they shy at him — go around him — will not 
give him an opportunity to be polite to them. They 
are martyrs, as they suppose, to unjust social distinc- 
tions. They act as if they were painfully uncertain as 
to whether they are men and women or spaniels. 

Now by the side of the person who carries an un- 
suspicious, self-respectful, open face, into any presence, 
such people as these seem unworthy of the race to 



Shying People. 225 



which they belong. It is not the bold, brassy, self-as- 
serting man who is their superior, because his sort of 
offensive forwardness originates in even a worse state 
of mind and heart than the habit of shying. When a 
man shies, he only suspects that he is inferior to his 
surroundings. When a man offensively puts himself 
forward, and talks loudly among his betters, he knows 
he is mean, and knows that he is not where he belongs. 
You will find a professional gambler to be a loud- 
mouthed man, who not only does not shy at his bet- 
ters, but who seeks all convenient opportunities for 
associating with them, and claiming an equality with 
them. The shying man is one who has not much re- 
spect for himself, who is envious and jealous of others, 
and who, however strongly he may protest against the 
charge, has the most abject respect for social position 
and arbitrary social distinctions. If he see a man who 
either assumes or seems to be above him, it is a reason 
in his mind why that man should not notice him. The 
result is that decent men soon take him at his own val- 
uation, and notice him no more than they would a 
dog ; and they serve him right. 

I know of no more thankless task than the attempt 
to assure shying people that we love them, respect 
them, and are glad to continue their acquaintance. 
The instances in which old school-mates meet in the 
journey of life with a sickening coolness, in conse- 
10* 



226 Leiibns in Life. 



quence of changed circumstances and relations, are of 
every-day occurrence. Two persons who separated 
at the school-house door in dawning manhood, with 
equal prospects, come together later in life. One has 
risen in the world, has won hosts of friends, has been 
put forward by them into public office, perhaps, and 
has acquired a competence. The other has remained 
upon the old homestead, has had a hard life, and has 
won neither distinction nor wealth. The fortunate 
man grasps the hand of the other with all the cordiality 
of his nature and of his honest friendship; but he 
meets a reserve which may be almost sullen. He 
strives to call up the scenes gone by — the old school- 
sports — the school companions, boys and girls — the old 
neighborhood friendships — but they will not come. 
All attempts to touch the heart of his former school- 
mate, and bring him into sympathy through the power 
of association, fail. The poor fool suspects his friend 
of patronizing him, and he will not be patronized. 
Feeling that his friend has got along in the world bet- 
ter than himself, he cannot understand why he should 
not be regarded as an inferior, and treated as such. 
Thenceforward, the fortunate man must seek the so- 
ciety of the unfortunate man, or he will never have it. 
The former may give practical recognition of entire 
equality, to the best of his ability, but it will avail 
nothing, for the latter will not " toady " to his friend, 



Shying People. 227 



nor be " patronized " by bim. At last the fortunate 
man becomes tired of the effort to make his unfortu- 
nate friend understand him, and he kicks him and his 
memory aside, and calls it a friendship closed forever, 
without fault upon his part. 

I have often wished that it could be understood by 
these people who are so uncertain in regard to their 
position, and so suspicious that everybody has the dis- 
position to slight them, and so much afraid of being 
patronized, and so averse to the thought of " toadying " 
that they stand stiffly aloof from the society which they 
envy, and so much offended with people for feeling 
above them, that their sentiments and feelings are suffi- 
cient reasons for society to hold them in contempt. 
There is a lack of self-respect — a meanness — in their 
position, that is really a sufficient apology for treating 
them with entire social neglect. They habitually mis- 
construe those among whom they move ; they are ex- 
acting of attention to the last degree ; they are always 
uncomfortable, and they are ready to take offense at 
the smallest fancied provocation. I have now in my 
mind an artisan whom I had occasion to get acquainted 
with a dozen years ago ; and I have compelled him to 
speak to me every time I have met him since. I really 
do not know what he had done to make him regard 
himself so contemptuously, but I think he has never to 
this day fully believed that I have the slightest respect 



228 Leffons in Life. 



for him. He has tried to dodge me. He has shied 
repeatedly, but I have compelled him to make me a 
good-natured bow, till he begins to like it, I think — 
till he expects it, at least. 

Many children are bred to the idea that certain 
families are socially above them. They are taught 
from their cradles to consider themselves in a certain 
sense inferior. How few American children are taught 
that there is no degradation in poverty, and that a 
humble employment and an obscure position are en- 
tirely consistent with self-respect, under all circum- 
stances, in whatever society. I do not mean to say 
that they have not heard their parents remark that 
they were "as good as anybody." There is enough 
of this talk; and it is precisely this which teaches 
children that they are born to what their parents con- 
sider dishonor, — inferiority to their neighbors. It is 
impossible for children who have been bred in this way 
ever to outgrow, entirely, their feeling of inferiority. 
The people who are entirely self-respectful never have 
any thing to say about their position in the presence 
of their children ; and it is a cruel thing to teach a 
child, not that there is a grade of society which is act- 
ually above him, but that the persons who occupy 
that grade look down upon him — and, in the consti- 
tution of society, have the right to look down upon 
him — with contempt. To see an honest lad in humble 



Shying People. 229 



clothing actually awed by finding himself in the pres- 
ence of a well-dressed child of affluence, is very pitiful ; 
and there are thousands of these poor boys who, hav- 
ing won wealth and distinction, never in their con- 
sciousness lose their early estate sufficiently to feel at 
home with those among whom the advance of fortune 
has brought them. 

A thoroughly self-respectful person will command 
respect anywhere. A man who carries into the world an 
unsuspecting, unassuming face, who is polite to every- 
body, minds his own business, and does not show by his 
demeanor that he bears about with him a sense of degra- 
dation and inferiority, and who gives evidence that he 
considers himself a man, and expects the treatment due 
to a man, will secure politeness and respect from every 
true gentleman and gentlewoman in the world. The man 
who shies, and suspects, and envies, and is full of petty 
jealousies, and is always afraid that he shall not get 
all that is due to him in the way of polite attention, and 
manifests a feeling of great uncertainty and anxiety 
concerning his own social position, is sure to be shun- 
ned at last, and he will well deserve his fate. No real 
gentleman, and no true gentlewoman, ever has feelings 
like these. It is only those who are neither, and who 
do not deserve the position of either, that are troubled 
in this way. I give it as a deliberate judgment that 
there is far less of contempt for the poor and obscure 



230 Leffons in Life. 

among what are denominated the higher classes of 
society than there is of envy and hatred of the rich and 
renowned among the poor and humble ; and that the 
principal "bar to a more cordial and gentle intercourse 
between the two classes, is the ]ack of self-respect 
which pervades the latter, and the mean, degrading 
humility which they manifest in all their relations with 
those whom they consider above their level. 

American society is mixed — heterogeneous — more 
so, probably, than that of any other country. There 
is no such thing as well-defined classification. There is 
no nobility, no gentry, no aristocracy, no peasantry. 
The owners of palaces were bred in log cabins ; men 
of learning are the children of boors; and one can 
never tell by a man's position and relations in society 
into what style of life he was born. The boy goes 
into the city from his father's farm, carrying only a 
hardy frame, a good heart, and a suit of homespun, and 
twenty years frequently suffice to establish, him as a 
man of fortune, and marry him to a woman of fashion. 
There is no bar to progress in any direction for the 
ambitious man, except lack of brains and tact. Society 
erects no barriers of caste which define the bounds of 
his liberty. Notwithstanding this, there is always, in 
every place, a body of people who assume to be " the 
best society." The claim to the title is rarely well 
substantiated, and is based on different ideas in differ- 



Shying People. 231 



ent places. We shall find in some places, that society 
crystallizes around the idea of wealth ; in others, around 
the idea of literary culture ; in others, around certain 
religious views, so that, as it may happen, the " best 
society " is constituted of the Presbyterian, or Episco- 
palian, or Unitarian, or other sectarian element. In 
other places, an old family name is the central power, 
and, in others still, a certain style of family life attracts 
sympathetic materials which assume the position of 
" the best society." 

Whatever may be the central idea of the self-con- 
stituted elite, they are always the objects of the envy 
of a large number of minds. Silly people " lie awake 
nights " to get into the best society. Those who are 
securely in, of course sleep soundly in their safety and 
their self-complacency ; and those who are too low to 
think of rising to it, and those who do not care for it, 
go through the six to ten hours of their slumber " with- 
out landing," as the North River boatmen say. But a 
middle class, who range along the ragged edges of so- 
ciety, know no rest. They sail along in an uncertain 
way, like the moon on the border of a cloud — some- 
times in and sometimes out — feeling naked and very 
much exposed among the stars, and rather foggy and 
confused in the cloud, as if, after all, they did not be- 
long there. It is in this class that we meet with shying 
men and shying women. It is in this class that we find 



232 Leffons in Life. 

heart-burnings, and jealousies, and envyings, and sen- 
sitive misunderstandings. It is a sort of purgatory 
through which the rising man and woman pass to reach 
the paradise of their hope, and from which an unhappy 
soul is never lifted. These peojple do not stop to in- 
quire whether they have any sympathy, or any thing in 
common with the society which they seek — whether 
they would be lost, or whether they would be at home 
in it. They do not even seem to suspect that much 
of that which is called the best society, is the last so- 
ciety that a sensible, good man should seek. 

Let us suppose that wealth is the central idea of the 
best society, and then let the aspirant to this society 
ask himself whether he has wealth. Has he a fine 
house and an elegant turnout ? Does he dress expen- 
sively, and is he able to give costly entertainments ? 
Is he prepared to unite, on a plane of perfect equality, 
with those who give the law to this society ? If so, 
it will not be necessary for him to seek it, for the so- 
ciety will seek him, — that is, if he be an agreeable 
man. If he be very rich indeed, why, it is not neces- 
sary that he be agreeable at all. But suppose literary 
culture be the central force of this society — has the aspi- 
rant any fitness for, or sympathy with it ? Can he meet 
those who form this society as an equal, or mingle in it 
as a thoroughly sympathetic element? Would he feel 
happy and at home in a literary atmosphere ? These 



Shying People. 233 



questions indicate a legitimate direction of inquiry, 
touching every case of this kind. Multitudes of 
those who are dissatisfied with their position have 
nothing in common with the society to which they as- 
pire, and would he so much out of place there that 
they would be very unhappy. My idea, then 5 is, that 
so far as society is concerned, men and women natu- 
rally find their own place. A true gentleman and a 
genuine gentlewoman, wherever they may appear, and 
whoever they may be, are as readily known as any ob- 
jects ; and really good society recognizes its affinities 
for them at once. They do not have to seek for a 
place, for they fall into their place as naturally as a 
soldier falls into, and joins step with, his company. 

ISTow what can be meaner than the jealousy which 
sits in the circle where it is really most at home, and 
regards with its green and greedy eyes, a circle for 
which it has no affinities, except the affinities which 
envy has for that which it considers above itself? It 
is a meanness, too, which has two sides to it. It is no- 
torious that the black overseer upon the plantation is 
severer with his companions in slavery than a white 
man would be, and it is just as notorious that the man 
who has abjectly bowed before the distinction of wealth 
and social standing, always becomes insufferably pre- 
tentious when fortune or favor lifts him to the place of 
his desire. The man who shies those he esteems his 



234 Leffons in Life. 

betters is always a proud man at heart, or if the adjec- 
tive be allowable, an aristocratic man ; and he is very 
careful to preserve his position of comparative respect- 
ability with relation to those below him. He will al- 
ways be found to be pretentious in his own circle, and 
supercilious with relation to those in lower life. Is it 
not true that half of the neighborhood quarrels that 
take place, and three-quarters of the slander, and all 
the gossip that are indulged in, result from these petty 
jealousies between circles, and the sensitiveness that is 
felt regarding social standing on the part of those who 
are not quite so high in the world as they would like 
to be? 

I can only notice briefly the shying that is done by 
the other side of society. In effect, I have done this 
already, perhaps, but it is proper to say directly that 
there are many moving in what is called the best so- 
ciety, who, with a suspicion that they do not belong 
there, or a feeling that their position is not secure 
there, shy a humble man when they meet him, and 
dodge all vulgar associations. I suppose that no true 
gentleman is ever afraid of being mistaken for any 
thing else. A gentleman knows that there is nothing 
which is more unlike the character of a gentleman than 
the supercilious treatment of the humble, and the fear 
of losing caste by treating every class with kindness 
and politeness. I recognize no difference between the 



Shying People. 235 



two shying classes — the men who shy their fellow-men 
because they are high, and the men who shy their fel- 
low-men because they are low. Both are mean, both 
are unmanly, and both are deficient in the self-respect 
necessary to the constitution of a gentleman. There 
are no better friends in the world — no men who under- 
stand each other better — none who meet and converse 
more freely at their ease — none who have more re- 
spect for each other — than a genuine gentleman and a 
self-respectful humble man, who knows his place in the 
social scale, and is abundantly satisfied with it. There 
is no need of any intercourse between men, of what- 
ever difference of social standing, less dignified and 
gentle than this. 



LESSON XVII. 

FAITH IN HUMANITY. 

"Say, what is honor ? 'Tis the finest sense 
Of justice which the human mind can frame, 
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim, 
And guard the way of life from all offense, 
Suffered or done." "Wordsworth. 

"A child of God had rather ten thousand times suffer for Christ, than that 
Christ should suffer by Him." — John Mason. 

" For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along 
Eound the earth's electric circle the swift flash of right or wrong ; 
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast frame 
Through its ocean-sounded fibres feels the gush of joy or shame ;— 
In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim." 

Lowell. 

^ISTE of the most reliable supports of that which is 
best in man is faith in other men. In truth, I be- 
lieve that no man can lose his faith in men and women, 
and remain as good a man as he was before the loss. 
Better evidence that a man is rotten in some portion 
of his character, or rotten clean through his character, 
cannot be found than real, or pretended, loss of faith 
in his fellows. When a young man tells me that he 



Faith in Humanity. 237 

has no doubt that certain persons, publicly reputed to 
be good, take sly drinks in their own closets, and de- 
scend into grosser indulgences when in strange places ; 
that the best men are hypocrites ; that there is no such 
thing as womanly virtue ; and that appetite and selfish- 
ness outweigh everywhere principle and manly honor, 
I know that, ninety-nine times in one hundred, he finds 
a reason in his OAvn heart and life for his declarations. 
I know that he simply wishes to maintain a certain de- 
gree of self-respect, and that he finds no way to do this 
save by bringing everybody around him down to his 
own level. A man who has lost his virtue, and is still 
suffering under the blows of conscience, is very loth to 
believe that there is any virtue in the world. 

Yet there are circumstances in which faith in 
humanity is lost without fault, though never without 
damage, on the part of the loser ; and very sad cases 
they are. I remember an abused, broken-hearted, and 
forsaken wife, who declared to me her belief that her 
husband was no worse than other men (pleasant for 
me, wasn't it ?) — that there was not a man in the world 
who could withstand temptation, or who would have 
done differently from her husband under the same cir- 
cumstances. Why was this ? She had loved this man 
with all the devotion of which her warm woman's heart 
was capable ; she had respected him as an embodiment 
of all manly qualities ; he had impersonated her beau 



238 Leffons in Life. 

ideal. If he — the peerless, the prince — could fall, and 
forsake, and forget, who would not? He who had 
once been to her the noblest and best man in the 
world, could never become worse than the rest of the 
world. Now one of the foulest wrongs and one of the 
deepest injuries which this man had inflicted upon his 
wife was the destruction of her faith in men. He had 
not only blotted out her faith in him, but he had blot- 
ted out her faith in humanity, and, of course, her faith 
in herself. What safeguards of her own virtue fell 
when her faith in man was destroyed, she did not 
know ; but, in her innermost consciousness, she must 
have grown careless of herself — possibly desperate. 

Hardly a month passes hj in y/hich we do not hear 
of some defalcation, some lapse from integrity, by a 
man who, through many years, of business life, had 
maintained an untarnished reputation. I have half a 
dozen such cases in my memory now, and I do not 
know what to make of them. When I see a character 
standing to-day above all reproach, compacted through 
many years of manly, honest, Christian living, over- 
thrown to-morrow, and trodden in the mire, I am 
shocked. If such men fall, where are we to look for 
those who will not? If such men, with worthy na- 
tures, and long practice of virtue, and myriad motives 
for the maintenance of an unspotted character, yield to 
temptation, and are suddenly overthrown, what reason 



Faith in Humanity. 239 

have I to suppose that my partner, my brother, myself, 
shall escape ? I am scared, and grow cautious, and sus- 
picious. 

Did you ever think that there is one individual, at 
least, in the world — that possibly there are ten indi- 
viduals, possibly one hundred, possibly more — who be- 
lieve that you are, as a man or a woman, just as nearly 
right as you can be ? Did you ever think that there 
are people who pin their faith to you, who believe in 
you, who trust you, and that among those people your 
own reputation is identified with the reputation of the 
race ? I care not how humble a man may be, there 
are always those who trust in him. Think of the trust 
which a family of children repose in their parents, and 
of the faith which the parents have in their children. 
Very humble the parents may be — very untrustworthy 
as moral guides, and judges, and authorities; but if 
they were angels, with the light of heaven in their eyes, 
they would not be more confided in and relied upon by 
the little ones who cling to their knees. So, at all ages, 
we garner our faith in individuals ; and so, all men and 
women, however humble and unworthy they may be, 
become the objects and recipients of this faith. 

Now, if there be ten men and women who have 
garnered their faith in me — who believe in me, through 
and through — and whose faith in all humanity would 
be sadly shocked, if I should fall, and prove to them 



240 



Leflbns in Life. 



that their confidence had been entirely misplaced, then 
I hold for those ten persons the reputation of the hu- 
man race in my hands. If you, my reader, have at- 
tracted to yourself the honest faith of a thousand 
hearts, then you hold in your hands, for those hearts, 
the good name of humanity. Upon the shoulders of 
each man in the community, there rests a great respon- 
sibility. He has not only his own reputation to take 
care of, but he has the reputation of his race. If all 
mankind are to be thought more meanly of by man- 
kind, to be less trusted, and less loved, because I have 
been untrue, though my untruth touch but one person 
directly, I commit a great crime against my race. Yet 
this crime is nothing by the side of that which I com- 
mit against those who have trusted in me. It injures 
them to think meanly of mankind — to have their con- 
fidence shaken in humanity — much more than it injures 
humanity to be thought meanly of. A man may as 
well stab me as to destroy my faith in my kind, for the 
comfort and happiness of my life depend upon the 
maintenance of this faith; 

There are not a few men and women in this world 
who are thoroughly conscious that not only their im- 
mediate personal friends think better of them than they 
deserve, but that the community — all who know them 
— accord to them a higher excellence of heart and life 
than they really possess. There are some who seem fit- 



Faith in Humanity. 241 

ted by nature to attract the affection, and secure the re- 
spect of all those with whom they come into contact, 
in a very remarkable degree ; and, yet, these persons 
may be painfully conscious, all the while, that they are 
not so good as they are thought to be. They are not 
hypocrites ; they have never intended to deceive any- 
body ; they have never pretended to be what they are 
not; but people believe in them without limit. A 
person who has this power of attracting the confidence 
of men has forced upon him an immense responsibility. 
To say nothing of his duty to himself and his God, he 
owes it to his race to be, or to become, as good as he 
seems. It is essentially a crime against humanity for 
one who draws the hearts of men to him easily, to do 
any thing which will tend to depreciate their estimate 
of his character. A man should carry a life thus ex- 
travagantly over-estimated, as he would carry a cup of 
wine — careful that none be spilled, and careful that no 
impurity fall into it. It is a great blessing to be loved 
and respected — nay to be admired for admirable quali- 
ties — and when men are generous enough to pay in ad- 
vance for excellence, they should never be cheated in 
the amount and quality of the article. 

There is such a thing as honor among men ; there 

are such things as modesty, truth, and integrity. They 

are qualities that belong to humanity, irrespective of 

religion and of Christian culture. There are men so 

11 



242 LeiTons in Life. 

true to their higher natures that I would trust them 
with my name, my gold, my children, my all, without 
a doubt. I am proud to claim kinship with such men. 
They confer dignity upon the race of which I am a 
member. I am glad to take their hands in mine. Sup- 
pose one of these — for such things have been — should 
deceive me, and I should discover that my name had 
been abused, my gold wasted or stolen, and my chil- 
dren ruined by this man : could I ever trust again ? 
Should I not be humiliated? Should I not feel dis- 
graced ? Should I ever be willing to let another man 
into my heart ? Should I not doubt whether there are, 
indeed, such things as honor, and modesty, and truth, 
and integrity, in the world ; and thus doubting, would 
not the strongest defences of my own virtue be thrown 
down ? The truth is, that no man can do an unmanly 
thing without inflicting an injury on the. whole human 
race. No man can say " I will do as I choose, and it 
will be nobody's business." Every man's sin is every- 
body's business, literally. Every sin shakes men's con- 
fidence in men, and becomes, whatever its origin, the 
enemy of mankind ; and all mankind have a right to 
make common cause in its extermination. 

I once heard a careless fellow say that he " professed 
nothing and lived up to it ; " but " professing nothing " 
does not exonerate a man at all, so far as relates to the 
personal maintenance of honor, purity, and truth. The 



Faith in Humanity. 243 

man who would excuse a lapse from virtue, or any ob- 
liquity of conduct, on the ground that he did not pro- 
fess any thing, simply announces to me the execrable 
proposition that every man has a kind or degree of 
right to be a rascal until he pledges himself to be some- 
thing better. There are altogether too many men in 
the world who are keeping themselves easy with the 
thought that if they are not very good, they never pre- 
tended or professed to be, — as if this failure publicly 
to pronounce themselves on the side of the highest mo- 
rality, were a sufficient apology for minor delinquen- 
cies ! It seems to be a poultice of poppies to some sen- 
sitively inflamed consciences, that, whatever they may 
have done, they have never broken promises volunta- 
rily made, to do right — as if there were a release from 
the obligation to do right, in failing to make the prom- 
ise ! If it will help a man to do right, publicly to pro- 
fess to do right, and to do good to other men by 
placing his influence on the right side, then the first 
duty a man owes to his race, is to make this declara- 
tion. But I will not linger here, because my words 
have led me to the discussion of the obligations of those 
who have made a profession of Christianity, and taken 
upon themselves the vows of Christian church-member- 
ship. 

When a man joins a Christian church, he becomes 
related to that church in the same way that nature 



244 Leffons in Life. 



makes him related to humanity. The reputation of 
the church is placed in his keeping. He cannot do an 
unchristian thing without injury to the church, or with- 
out depreciating, in the eyes of the world, every other 
member. Think what a blow is inflicted upon the 
church of Jesus Christ by such scandalous immoralities 
as some of its most prominent members have been 
guilty of— by forgeries, and adulteries, and drunken- 
ness ! These cases are not common, but when they 
occur, they are blows under which the church reels. 
The outside world looks on, and scoffs : " Aha ! That's 
your Christianity, is it ? " 

I declare that I do not know of a position that 
more strongly appeals to a man's personal honor than 
that of membership in a Christian church. Even if a 
man in such a position should say within himself: 
" This costs more than it comes to. I love my vices 
more than I love the Master whose name I profess. 
Either openly or secretly, I will give rein to my appe- 
tites and passions " — he should be arrested by the con- 
sideration that he proposes to do that which will wound 
the feelings, and degrade the position, and injure the 
influence, of thousands of the best men and women in 
the world ; that he proposes to inflict an irreparable 
injury upon a cause which has never injured him, and 
whose office it is to save him, and all mankind. Per- 
haps he is so weak, and temptation is so strong, that 



Faith in Humanity. 245 

he feels, in the stress of his trial, that he can afford to 
perjure his own soul ; but if he does, he has no right 
to wound others. Better fight the devil until the anL 
mal within us bleeds at every vein — until it dies, if 
that must be — than " offend one of these little ones." 
A man who will join a church, and then lead an un- 
christian life, not only demonstrates before the world 
his hypocrisy, but he voluntarily undertakes to prove 
that he has no personal honor. An honorable man will 
sacrifice himself always before he will voluntarily in- 
flict injury upon a cause he has pledged himself to sus- 
tain, and upon men and women whose good name is in 
his hands. When a member of a church has become 
so hardened in a course of bad living, that no pang 
comes to him when he thinks of the injury he is inflict- 
ing upon the Christian church, he is bad enough for a 
prison. I would not trust him the length of my arm. 

We have had, within the last ten years, too many 
notable instances of falls from virtue among the clergy; 
and every fall has been like an avalanche. They come 
from a point so near to heaven, and fall so far, that 
mountain-sides are scarred and whole communities 
whelmed by the calamity. It takes, often, many years 
for the villages that lie at their feet to smile again. 
All Christendom feels the shock, and mourns with 
downcast eyes the consequences. I freely grant that, 
as a class, the American clergy, of all denominations, 



246 Leffons in Life. 

are the purest and best men whom I know ; but I can- 
not resist the conviction that there are many of them 
who forget what the responsibility is that rests upon 
them. It was the remark of an aged clergyman, re- 
tired from pulpit duties, that if he were a layman he 
should watch with more anxiety and carefulness than 
laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and 
the women of their Hock. I do not understand this as 
a statement that there is any general looseness of con- 
duct among the clergy at all ; but as one which covers 
a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and 
no punishment; There are women whose affection for 
their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse 
with their pastors. There shall never be an improper 
word spoken ; there shall never be a deed committed 
that would bring a blush to the most sensitive cheek ; 
yet a susceptible woman in the society of a minister of 
strong and magnetic sympathies, may become as passive 
as a babe. Led toward him by her religious nature, 
attracted and held by his intellectual power and the 
graces of his language, yielding to him her confidence, 
it is not strange that, before she is aware, she is a cap- 
tive without a captor, a victim without an enemy, a 
wreck without a destroyer. 

"Now I know that there is not a pastor of a strong 
and graceful and sympathetic nature who reads these 
words without understanding what I mean — who does 



Faith in Humanity. 247 

not know that there are women in his congregation 
who are, either consciously or unconsciously, the slaves 
of his will. I have no doubt that there are some such 
pastors who will read this essay with a flush of guilt 
upon their faces. They have never meant these women 
any ill — they would not harm them for the world — but 
they are conscious of a selfish and most unchristianly 
pleasure in these conquests of female natures — these 
parlor triumphs, God forgive them ! Perhaps they go 
further, and, by the lingering, fervent pressure of a 
hand, or the glance of an eye, or the utterance of some 
bit of gallantry or flattery, send into a woman's heart 
an unwomanly and an unchristian thought. Perhaps 
they take special delight in the society of some half a 
dozen female members of their flock, and find them- 
selves dressing for them — betraying to them their 
weaknesses — opening, in various ways, avenues by 
which the quick eyes and instincts of these women can 
see directly into them. The number of pastors is not 
small, I think, who are not aware that there is one 
woman, or that there are some women, who know 
more of what is in them, to their disadvantage, than 
any man, — that before certain lenient — possibly sad and 
forgiving eyes — they stand as men who indulge in es- 
sentially unchristian vanities of purpose and life. 

Of all woman-killers in this world, I know of none 
so disgusting as one whose chosen profession it is to 



248 Leffons in Life. 



preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A clerical fop, a 
ministerial gallant, a man who preaches the love of 
God on Sunday, and lays snares for an innocent heart 
on Monday afternoon, is a disgrace to Christianity, and 
a sad burden to the Christian cause. Does such a man 
think that he can add a little zest to a leisure hour and 
a humdrum life, by toying with a tender friendship, 
and giving lease and latitude to his desire for personal 
conquest, and yet that no one shall know it ? Ah, the 
fallacy ! I know of eminent clergymen — earnest work- 
ers — who, by yielding to this desire once, have been 
shorn of their power for good forever, so far as those 
are concerned who really know them and their weak- 
ness. There are ministers in America before whom 
strong men tremble, and great congregations bow them- 
selves, who could be laughed to scorn and smothered 
in a cloud of blushes, bj some girl to whom, in a weak 
moment, they betrayed the vain heart that beats within 
them. Ah ! ye men of the black coat and the white 
neck-cloth, — toying with women, under whatever dis- 
guise ; indulging in the vanity of personal power, how- 
ever ingeniously you mask it, is not for you. You can* 
never do it without an injury to the religion which you 
profess to preach. If you find that you are too weak 
to resist these temptations — and they are great to such 
as you — then you should leave the desk forever. You, 
at least, are bound in personal honor to quit the pub- 



Faith in Humanity. 



249 



lie advocacy of a cause which your private life dis- 
honors. 

Easy to preach, you say ? Easier to preach than 
practise ? Xobody knows it better than I — unless it 
be you. I do not expect perfection in this world, of 
anybody ; — I do not expect impossibilities of anybody. 
But there are certain duties which men owe to human- 
ity and their race, and which members of Christian 
churches and teachers of Christian churches owe to 
Christianity and to their brotherhood, which are pos- 
sible to be performed, and which I insist upon. I do 
not appeal to the highest motives — at least I do not 
appeal to religious motives. I appeal to personal honor. 
I say that every man, high or low, is bound in honor so 
to conduct himself as not to disgrace humanity — as not 
to shake the confidence of men in human honor. I 
say that every man who belongs to a Christian church 
— no matter what his internal life may be — is bound in 
honor so to carry himself before men and women, that 
the Christian name receive no damage and the Chris- 
tian cause no prejudice in their eyes. Every man car- 
ries the burden of his race and his brotherhood ; and 
if he be a man, he will neither ignore it nor try to 
shake it off. 

11* 



LESSON XVIII. 

SOEE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS. 

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; 
Eaze out the written troubles of the brain ? " 
Shakspeeb. 

"I have gnashed 
My teeth in darkness till returning morn, 
Then cursed myself till sunset ; I have prayed 
For madness as a blessing ; 'tis denied me." 

Bykon. 

Alessandra. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing 
Thy happiness ! — what ails thee, cousin of mine ? 
Why didst thou sigh so deeply? 

" Castiglione. Did I sigh? 
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion, 
A silly — a most silly fashion I have 
When I am very happy. Did I sigh ? " Pob. 

THERE is a hill opposite to my window, up which, 
during all the long and weary day, horses are 
drawing heavy loads. The majority of them crawl 
patiently along, with their heads down and with reek- 
ing flanks and shoulders, pausing occasionally as the 



Sore Spots and Senlitive Spots. 251 

water-bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with 
the flies that vex their ears, and the insufficiency of 
their short and stumpy tails to protect their quivering 
sides. Some of these animals are not so patient, but 
are nervous and spasmodic and unhappy. I have no- 
ticed one among them particularly, that has a very bad 
time every morning with his first load. He is what the 
teamsters call " balky," though evidently an excellent 
horse. Much coaxing and not a little whipping seem 
necessary to get him started ; and then he plunges 
into his work as if he were determined to tear his har- 
ness and his load all in pieces. I notice that there are 
certain unusual fixtures about his collar, and learn that 
the poor animal has a galled shoulder, so raw and in- 
flamed that all his first efforts in the morning are at- 
tended by pain, and that he only works well after the 
flesh has become benumbed by pressure. I ask his 
driver why he does not turn the creature into the pas- 
ture, and let the ulcer heal, and am told that he has 
been treated thus repeatedly, but that it always returns 
when labor is resumed. There is a livery stable that I 
visit frequently ; and while I wait to be served I notice 
what the grooms are doing. I see that when the curry- 
comb or brush touches a certain spot upon the horse's 
skin there is a cringe, and usually a kick and a squeal, 
— possibly a harmless nip at the groom's shoulder. I 
learn, too, that there is a certain place upon the back 



252 Leffons in Life. 

of every horse that the grooms are not permitted to 
bathe with cold water. 

These sore spots and tender spots and sensitive 
spots on horses have very faithful counterparts in the 
minds and characters of men. I do not know that I 
ever met a man who had not on him, somewhere, a 
sore spot, or a tender spot, or a sensitive spot — a spot 
that would either gall under the collar of labor, or 
bring on hysterics if harshly rubbed, or communicate 
a damaging shock to the nervous system when suddenly 
cooled. Very few men arrive at thirty-five years of 
age without getting galled, and very few entirely re- 
cover from the abrasion while they live. The spot 
never thoroughly heals, and the old collar only needs 
to be put on, even after the longest period of rest, to 
develop the ulcer in the same old place. I heard a 
young clergyman preach recently, and I instantly 
learned that he had a sore spot under his collar. He 
was a young man of fine powers, bold intellect, a strong 
love of freedom, and a will determined to do honor to 
his convictions. He had formed his own opinion upon 
certain points of doctrine, and had insisted upon it in 
the presence of his elders. The consequence was that 
he had been bitterly opposed, and was with great diffi- 
culty settled over his parish. The screws had been 
put tightly down upon him, and he had felt, in the 
very depths of his sensitive soul, that the liberty where- 



Sore Spots and Senfitive Spots. 253 

with Christ had made him free had been tampered 
with. So he could neither pray nor preach without 
showing that he had a sore spot on him. He did not 
betray it by refusing to draw at all ; but he drew vio- 
lently, as if he had been hitched to the leg of an obtuse 
Doctor of Divinity, and intended to give all the other 
Doctors of Divinity notice to get out of the way. 
Now that sore spot on that young man's shoulder is 
sure to color all his efforts from this time henceforth, 
until he puts on another kind of collar. The same old 
sting will be in all his preaching — a tinge of personal 
feeling — that the masses of those who hear him preach 
will not understand, and that he, at last, will become 
unconscious of. Ministers have more sore places under 
their harnesses than any class of men I know of. 

A minister who has adopted unpopular views, and, 
in his advocacy of them, has rubbed against the fixed 
opinions or prejudices of the people to which he is 
called to preach, is very sure to get sore ; and he will 
either wince with the friction or oppose himself to it 
with violence. His soreness will alwaj^s be calling at- 
tention to that which caused it, so that if his wound 
was procured in the advocacy of some infernal doctrine 
like " infant damnation," why, infant damnation will 
seem to become a very precious doctrine to him, and 
he will always be talking about it, and enforcing it. 
If he has preached against slavery, or intemperance, or 



254 Leffons in Life. 



any other public wrong or popular vice, and been 
fiercely and persistently opposed by any portion of his 
charge, he will betray the sore under his collar on all 
occasions, and very possibly become so fractious and 
violent that his flock will be obliged to turn him out to 
pasture. A minister who gets sore under the friction 
of any particular collar seems to feel that it is neces- 
sary for him to wear that particular collar all the time ; 
and he fails to remember that the reason why he has 
so much feeling with this collar on, is that it has 
made him sore. Not unfrequently he becomes so 
sensitive and so nervous that he kicks out of the traces, 
and runs away with, and smashes up, the vehicle to 
which he is attached. 

No small degree of the sourness and bitterness and 
violence of the advocates of special reforms comes from 
wearing too long the collar of the public apathy, or the 
public contempt. The men are very few, who, with 
the consciousness of being actuated by a good motive, 
can work against opposition a long time, without get- 
ting sore, and without betraying their soreness, either 
by stubbornness or violence. Touch them anywhere 
but upon the galled spot, and they will be as calm as 
clocks, and as good-natured as kittens; touch them 
there, and we are sure to get a kick and a squeal, and 
a nip at the shoulder. Heartless practical jokers un- 
derstand where " the raw " is, and know exactly what 



Sore Spots and Senntive Spots. 255 

. : , _ 

to say to provoke a galled man to make a fool of him- 
self. 

The conscience is very liable to become sore with 
friction. One entire section of the American nation 
became sore, even to madness, with working in the 
collar of the world's condemnation. The slave States 
of America were very comfortable with slavery so long 
as they conld hold it with self-respect, and so long as 
the world regarded them rather with sympathy and pity 
than with condemnation. As the popular opinion 
against slavery strengthened and became intensified, 
both in this and other countries, they became sore and 
sensitive. First, they tucked a constitutional rag be- 
tween the collar and the skin ; and as that did not seem 
to relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human 
philosophy; and philosophy soon wearing out, they 
tore their Bibles into pieces for materials with which 
to soften the cushion, and set the Christian church to 
making padding. Every thing failing to produce the 
desired result, and relieve them of their pain, they re- 
fused to draw their portion of the national load, kicked 
the Union in pieces, and ran away. They will never 
be happy again until slavery is abolished, or the atti- 
tude of the nation and of the world towards slavery is 
changed. This sore under the collar will never heal, 
either in or out of the Union, until the cause shall in 
some way be removed. 



256 Leffons in Life. 



It is the same with individuals as with peoples. A 
man cannot long wear a collar that presses upon his 
conscience, without getting through the skin — down 
upon the raw. When a man who sells liquor to his 
neighbors for drink, voluntarily apologizes to me for 
it, or justifies himself in it, I know very well that his 
conscience has a raw place upon it, and that it gives 
him trouble. When a woman takes particular pains to 
tell me that she is exceedingly economical, and that 
she really has had nothing for a year, I cannot but 
conclude that she has been making some expenditure, 
or some series of expenditures, that she knows she can- 
not afford, and that there is a raw place upon her con- 
science in consequence. In truth, I have never known 
a woman who wished to impress me with a sense of her 
rigid economy, who was not more anxious to convince 
herself of it than me. When a man undertakes to 
soften the character of any crime by apologies, and by 
arguments, it is invariably for the purpose of relieving 
its pressure upon a galled conscience, or shaping it to 
a different place. I am afraid the men are few who 
have escaped a galled spot upon their consciences. 

Pride has had a terrible time of it in the world. It 
is, perhaps, the most sensitive spot in human nature. 
Collars, curry-combs, and cold water have alike served 
to torment it. A great multitude of men and women 
have been obliged to work in the collar of poverty, 



Sore Spots and Senfitive Spots. 257 

against a galled pride, during all their life. They 
never start in the morning without flinching, and never 
work without violence, until their pride has become 
entirely benumbed by pressure. Ah ! if society could 
be unveiled, how few would be found with pride free 
from scars and raw places ! I once heard a simple boy 
tell a young man that his legs were crooked; and 
though the lad was very innocent, and only supposed 
that he had made and announced a pleasant discovery, 
he had, alas ! hit the man's pride on the very centre of 
its soreness and sensitiveness. One never knows, in 
large things, where he will hit the sensitive places in 
the pride of those he meets ; but in little things he is 
pretty sure to learn it concerning everybody. It is 
always safe to suppose that a very small man is sore on 
the subject of bodily dimensions. It will never do for 
a tall man to propose to measure altitude with him in 
the presence of women. It is never safe to inquire the 
age of any lady whom one knows to be more than 
twenty-five years old. There is not one man or woman 
in a hundred who possesses an unpleasant personal pe- 
culiarity, without getting a galled spot upon personal 
pride in consequence. A long nose, a squint eye, a 
clumsy foot, a low forehead, a hump in the back — any 
one of these will not bear mention in the presence of 
its possessor. 

It is quite amusing to witness the various methods 



258 Leffons in Life. 

resorted to for cheating the world with regard to these 
sore places in personal pride. Men who are conscious 
that they do not possess a particle of musical taste, and 
are really ignorant of the difference between Dundee 
and Yankee Doodle, will profess to be " very fond of 
music," and will not unfrequently convince themselves 
that they are so. Men who are exceedingly sensitive 
touching any eccentricities of person, will be constantly 
joking about their own long noses, or red hair, or big 
feet, and run on about them in the pleasantest sort of 
way, and persist in doing it on all occasions, as if the 
matter were exceedingly amusing to them, when the 
fact is that their pride is very sore in that particular 
spot. A woman who has passed her hour of bloom, 
and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient 
maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superflu- 
ous iteration, about the usefulness of old maids, and 
the independence of their lot — determined to cover up 
the galled spot that burns upon the surface of her per- 
sonal pride. The trick of keeping up the appearances 
of wealth, after wealth is departed, is a familiar one ; 
and though it rarely deceives, it is likely to be persisted 
in to the end of time. It is often very pitiful to wit- 
ness the ingenuity of the efforts that are made to cover 
from public observation the soreness of personal pride, 
caused by a change of circumstances. The Hepsibah 
Pynchons abound in houses of less than seven gables. 



Sore Spots and Senlitive Spots. 259 

There is probably no harness so apt to gall the 
shoulder of personal pride as that of ambition. The 
number of men in the world whose personal pride has 
a sore on it, inflicted by disappointed ambition, is sadly 
large. I have seen many a worthy man utterly spoiled 
by his failure to reach the political, social, or literary 
eminence at which he has aimed. Thenceforward his 
hand has been against every man, and he has imagined 
that every man's hand has been against him. All who 
contributed to his defeat, and all in any way associated 
with them, have become the subjects of his hatred and 
his animadversion. He has retired into himself, sneer- 
ing at every thing and everybody, doubtful of the sin- 
cerity of all friendly professions, and regarding himself 
as " a passenger," while the poor fools among whom 
he once so gladly numbered himself, chase the baubles 
by which his life has been so miserably cheated of its 
meed. It is very hard for a proud man, with a strong 
will, to feel that he has been baffled and beaten ; and a 
really noble man, defeated in his objects by trickery 
and meanness, will sometimes become half insane with 
the wound which his pride has received. He will never 
forget it ; and the old sore can never be touched, even 
in the most accidental way, without calling the fire into 
his eye, and the color into his cheek. In the domain 
of politics, " sore heads " notoriously abound, and I 
suppose they always will. 



260 Leffons in Life. 



Literary life is probably as prolific of failures, and as 
full of " sore heads " as political. The number of men 
and women who are ambitious of literary distinction, and 
who make great efforts to win it, is very large — larger 
than the world outside of the publisher's private office 
dreams of. The number of manuscripts rejected and 
never published is greater than the number published ; 
and of those which are published, not one in ten satis- 
fies, in its success, the ambition of its author. I sup- 
pose that it is within the bounds of truth to say that 
nine authors in every ten are disappointed men — men 
whose personal pride is wounded, who believe that the 
world has treated them unjustly, and who cherish a 
sore spot on their personal pride as long as they live. 
Some of these refuse to draw in any harness, and give 
themselves up to poverty and laziness, as the victims 
of the world's undiscriminating stupidity. Some be- 
come critics of the works of successful authors, and 
take their revenge in the hearty abuse of their betters. 
Others enter into other departments of effort, but carry 
with them through life the belief that they are out of 
their place, and the conviction that if they had been 
born in a nobler age they would have been recognized 
as the geniuses they imagine themselves to be. 

There is still another class which get sore with 
drawing in a harness that God puts upon them, and in 
the adoption of which they, have had nothing to do. 



Sore Spots and Senlitive Spots. 261 

A man of poetic sensibilities finds himself engaged in 
the pursuit of some humdrum calling. He sees how 
beautiful poetry is ; he feels its influence upon his soul ; 
but he has no power to create it. Another feels some- 
thing of the divinity of music, but muscular facility has 
been denied to him so that he cannot play, and his 
voice is harsh or feeble so that he cannot sing. He 
melts and glows under the sway of eloquence, and wor- 
ships at a distance the power of the orator over the 
hearts and minds of men ; but he knows that if he were 
in the orator's place, he would break down and become 
the object even of his own contempt. Great suscepti- 
bilities these people have — passive spirits — open to all 
good impressions, appreciative of that which is best in 
nature and art, yet without the power to act. They 
must always be plates to receive the picture, and never 
suns and cameras to imprint it. They must always live 
within sight of great and beautiful powers, but never 
have the privilege of wielding them. Doomed to the 
attitude of receptivity, they see that they can never 
change it ; and that they can never be to others what 
others are to them. Thus they grow sore with the 
thought of their weakness, and a sense of the circum- 
scription of their faculties. They see wonderful things 
— they apprehend the grace and the glory of great ac- 
tions — but they can achieve nothing. Many of these 
walk as in a dream through life — with a sense of wings 



262 Leffons in Life. 



upon their shoulders, clipped or lashed down. They 
see their companions rising, but they cling to the earth, 
and feel the difference as a humiliation. Alas! how 
many souls chafe against the consciousness of inferior 
powers, till even the fine susceptibilities with which 
nature endowed them are destroyed ! 

There would seem to be no end of the causes which 
produce sore and tender and sensitive spots upon the 
human soul. I have said nothing of grief and love 
and pity and anger, and a whole brood of powerful 
passions, but they are all operative toward the results 
which we are discussing. The cure for these sensitive 
sores is obvious enough. I would prescribe for a 
man as I would for a horse — go out to pasture, or 
adopt another kind of collar, and never wear the old 
one again. If a man has become sore by working 
against the apathy, the misconceptions, the miscon- 
structions, and the prejudices of the world, so that he 
feels the galling burden of the collar in all his actions, 
let him change his style of labor until the ulcer heal. 
If the conscience becomes sore, relieve it of that which 
made it sore, and never believe that padding can effect 
a cure. Even wounded pride will heal if we let it 
alone, and refrain from opening the wound on all occa- 
sions, and rubbing it against the causes which inflicted 
it. All the natural peculiarities of our constitution 
which wound our pride may be happily got along with 



Sore Spots and Senlitive Spots. 263 

by ignoring them. If my neighbor is a lovable man, 
I do not love him any the less because he wears a long 
nose, and I should never think of it if he were not al- 
ways joking about it, and trying to convince me that 
it did not offend him. A man who quarrels with his 
own constitution, and questions the benevolence that 
adjusted it to its conditions, quarrels with, and ques- 
tions, his Maker. I believe there are no sorenesses of 
the sort we are considering which time or change will 
not heal. 

It seems to me a very melancholy thing for a man 
to carry a mental ulcer with him through life — to feel 
its prick and pang in every effort — to be conscious of 
its presence every hour — to be engaged in covering it 
from sight, or in the attempt to deceive the world with 
regard to it. Life is altogether too good a thing to 
be spoiled by a little sore, or a large one, when there 
exists an obvious mode of cure. It is our immense and 
intense self-consciousness that stands in our way always 
in this matter. The truth is that the world does not 
think half so much about us as we imagine it does. A 
man may walk through the city of New York with a 
face " as homely as a hedge-fence," thinking about it 
all the time, and wondering what people think of it, 
and not a man of all the throng will even see it. It is 
so in the world at large. Our personal peculiarities, 
our personal failures, our personal weaknesses, our per- 



264 LefTons in Life. 

sonal affairs generally possess very little interest for 
others. They have enough to do in taking care of 
themselves, and have weaknesses, and failures, and pe- 
culiarities enough of their own ; and if the world should 
spurn our well-meant efforts in its behalf, why, let it 
go. It mends nothing to get sore and sensitive over 
it. When a man truly learns how little important he 
is in the world, he is generally beyond the danger of 
becoming galled by his harness, whatever it may be. 



LESSON XIX. 

THE INFLUENCE OF PEAISE. 

" Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep 
the ordinances as I delivered them unto you." — St. Paul. 

"O popular applause ! What heart of man 
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?" 

COWPEB. 

" Arbaces. Why now, you flatter. 
" Mardonius. I never understood the word." 
A King and no King. 

" Praising what is lost 
Makes the remembrance dear." 
Shakspeee. 

IT is pleasant to be praised. The man does not live 
who is insensible to honest praise. The love of ap- 
probation is as natural to every human soul as the love 
of offspring, or the love of liberty. It was planted 
there by God's hand, and it is as useful and important 
in its fruit, as it is fragrant and beautiful in its flower. 
I repeat that the man does not live who is insensible to 
honest praise. That great orator who seems to be a 
12 



266 Leffons in Life. 



king in the world, independent of his race, holding do- 
minion over human hearts, lifted far above the neces- 
sity of the plaudits of those around him, will pause 
with gratified and grateful ear, to listen to expressions 
of approval and admiration from the humblest lips. 
The greatest mind drinks praise as a pleasant draught, 
if it be honest and deserved. Perhaps you think that 
Doctor of Divinity who weighs two hundred pounds 
more or less, and is clad in glossy broad-cloth, and lifts 
his shining forehead above a white cravat, as Mont 
Blanc pierces a belt of cloud, and talks articulated 
thunder, and veils his wisdom behind gold-mounted 
spectacles, and moves among men with ineffable dig- 
nity, is above the need of, and the appetite for, praise. 
Ah ! you don't know the soft old heart under that 
satin waistcoat ! It can be made as warm and gentle 
and grateful, with just and generous praise, as that of 
a boy. Nay, the barber who takes his reverent nose 
between his thumb and finger, and sweeps the beard 
from his benevolent chin, understands exactly what to 
say in order to draw from his pocket an extra sixpence. 
There is no head so high, there is no neck so stiff, there 
is no back so straight, that it will not bend to take the 
flowers which praise tosses upon its path. 

" It's a sign of weakness, after all," sighs my friend, 
who is not praised quite as much as he would like to 
be. Begging your pardon, sir, it is no such thing. 



The Influence of Praife. 267 

The strongest Being in the universe — the God of the 
universe — is the one who demands, receives, and ac- 
cepts the most praise. Listen for a moment to those 
marvellous ascriptions which rise to Him from the bo- 
som of Christendom as ceaselessly and beautifully as 
clouds from the Heaven-reflecting ocean: "Thou art 
the King, immortal, invisible. Thou art the Source 
of all life, the Author of all being, the Fountain of all 
light and love and joy. Thou art Love itself; Thou 
art the Sum of all perfections. For what Thou art, we 
worship Thee ; for what Thou hast done for us, in Thy 
infinite loving-kindness, we praise Thee. We bless 
Thy Holy Name. "We call upon our souls and all 
within us to magnify Thy name forever and ever." 
The Bible itself has given us almost numberless forms 
of expression into which we may cast our divinest ado- 
ration, and the broadest outpourings of our hearts. 
The poets of all ages have been touched to their finest 
utterances in the rapture of worship and of praise. 

Now why should God want praise of us ? It cer- 
tainly is not because He is weak. Can it be because 
He wishes by means of it to produce some desired 
effect in us? Is there no hearing of this praise in 
Heaven ? Are we who sing and shout mere brawlers, 
who get a little strength of lungs by the exercise? 
There are some poor souls, doubtless, who believe this, 
as they believe that prayer has significance only as a 



268 Leffons in Life. 

moral exercise, and effect only as it reacts upon the 
soul. I believe that praise is pleasant to Him who sits 
upon the throne — that the honest and sincere expres- 
sions of love and adoration, and gratitude and praise, 
that rise to Him from the earth are at least shining rip- 
ples upon the soundless ocean of His bliss. Out from 
Him proceed, through myriad channels of effluence, the 
expressions of His love for those whom He has made 
and endowed with intelligence ; and I believe that it is 
requisite for His happiness that back along these lines 
of manifestation there should flow a tide of grateful 
recognition and adoring praise. Even a God would 
pine in loneliness and despair if there should come back 
no echoes to His loving voice — no refluent wave to the 
mighty bosom which makes all shores vocal with its 
breath and beating. God demands of all men that 
which all men owe to Him — that which His perfections 
and His acts deserve. 

This love of approbation in men, then, is Heaven- 
born and Godlike. The desire for approbation is as 
legitimate as the desire for food. I do not suppose 
that it should be greatly a motive of action — perhaps 
it should never be ; but when a man from a good mo- 
tive does a good thing, he desires the approval of the 
hearts that love him, and he receives their expressions 
of praise with grateful pleasure. Nay, if these expres- 
sions of praise are denied to him, he feels in a certain 



The Influence of Praife. 269 

sense wronged. He feels that justice has not been done 
him — that there is something due to him that has 
not been paid. I met a friend the other day who un- 
veiled his heart to me ; and I caught in the vision his 
heart's sense of the world's injustice. He had been a 
very poor boy, and had been bred under a poor boy's 
disadvantages; but a strong will, a good heart, fine 
talents, and a favoring fortune, brought to him gold, 
and lands, and equipage. They brought these not 
only, but they brought the power to be a benefactor 
of his native town. He won competence for himself, 
and then he became a public-spirited citizen, and did 
that for his home which no other man had done. Now 
he felt that he had clone for himself and for those 
around him nobly ; and it was natural that he should 
desire some response — some expression of praise. He 
did not get it. People either envied him, or they mis- 
construed his actions ; and he felt that his townsmen 
had been and were unjust — that they owed him some- 
thing which they had failed to pay. 

The world is so much accustomed to confound 
praise with flattery that if I were to go to a man with 
an honest tribute like this : " My friend, I admire you 
very much ; I think you possess noble talents, fine 
tastes, and an excellent heart; and I regard your 
course of action and your life with the warmest ap- 
proval," he would, nine times in ten, look into my face 



270 Leffons in Life. 

either with astonishment, or amusement, or offense. 
He would not know whether I intended to insult him 
or to practice a joke upon him. Praise between man 
and man is so rare that we neither know how to be- 
stow it nor how to receive it. This is carried to such 
an extent that one-half of the family life of Christen- 
dom is deprived of it. The husbands who never have 
a word of praise for their wives, the wives who never 
have a word of praise for their husbands, and the par- 
ents who only find fault with their children, are, I 
fear, in the majority. I know that the women are 
numberless who devote themselves throughout all their 
life to the comfort, the happiness, and the prosperity of 
their husbands, and who lie down in their graves at 
last, thirsty for their praise. Their patient and ceaseless 
ministry is taken as a matter of course, without the 
slightest recognition of its value as the expression of a 
loving and devoted heart. Now I believe that praise 
is due to the love and unselfish devotion of a wife, just 
as really as it is to the loving-kindness aod beneficent 
ministry of God, differing only in kind and degree. 
Husbands may die worth millions, and leave it all to 
their wives, (subject to the usual contemptible pro- 
vision that they do not marry again,) and yet be 
shamefully indebted to them forever and forever. 

Children are often spoiled because they get no 
credit for what they do. Of censure, they get their 



The Influence of Praife. 271 

due; but of praise, never. They do a thing which 
they feel to be praiseworthy, but it. is not noticed. 
When a child takes pains to do well, it feels itself paid 
for every endeavor by praise ; and the most unsophis- 
ticated child knows when praise is its due. It often 
conies to its mother's knee in natural simplicity, and 
asks for it. It is very well for men to say that " virtue 
is its own reward," and that the highest satisfactions are 
those which spring from a sense of duty accomplished ; 
but praise is pleasant and precious to men who not 
only say this, but feel it. Many a noble and sensitive 
pastor is disheartened because no one of the multitude 
which he so carefully and constantly feeds, ever tells 
him, with an open, honest utterance, his good opinion of 
him, and his satisfaction with his labors. Many an excel- 
lent author toils over his work in secret distrust, and 
issues it in fear and trembling, feeling that a word of 
praise will exalt him into a grateful and fruitful joy, and 
that an unjust and unkind criticism will half kill him. 

It is true that the mind is unhealthy which lives on 
praise; and it is just as true that he is mean and un- 
just who fails to award praise to those who earn it. 
The appetite for praise may become just as morbid 
and greedy by improper stimulus and abuse, as any 
other natural and legitimate appetite. It frequently 
does so, in those who associate it very intimately with 
success and gain. Actors and public singers, and all 



272 Leffons in Life. 

those whose success in life and whose pecuniary income 
depend upon the amount of popular praise they can 
win, are very apt to become greedy of praise, and will 
not unfrequently receive it in its most disgusting forms. 
There are lecturers and public speakers who depend 
upon praise for strength to speak an hour — men who, 
if their performances are repetitions, wait at certain 
points for applause, as a horse, travelling over a familiar 
road, stops always at certain hills to rest and take 
breath, and at certain wayside cisterns to drink. Many 
of these men demand praise, talking about themselves 
continually, and begging assent to their self-laudations. 
In these cases, praise becomes the dominant motive, 
and degrades and belittles its subjects always. The 
voluntary profanity and the impure jests that so often 
offend the ears of decent people at the theatre, are put 
forth to call out a cheer from groundlings whose praise 
is always essential disgrace. The jealousy and the 
quarrelsomeness of authors, actors, and singers, result 
from the fact that praise has become so much the mo- 
tive of their life that they grudge the applause awarded 
to their fellows. 

The difference between praise and flattery is as 
wide as that between praise and blame. Praise is a 
legitimate tribute to worth and worthy doing. It is 
entirely unselfish in its motive. It is the discharge of 
a debt. Flattery originates always in a selfish motive, 



The Influence of Praife. 273 

and seeks by falsehood to feed an unhealthy desire for 
praise. A man whom it is proper to praise cannot be 
flattered, and a man who can be flattered ought not to 
be praised. It is always safe to praise a man who 
really deserves praise. Such a man usually knows how 
much he deserves, and will take only the exact amount. 
Indeed, he will be very particular to give back the 
right change. The flatterer is like the man who stands 
behind a bar to deal out poison to a debased appetite 
for gain. The man who utters honest praise is noble ; 
the man who receives it does so without humiliation, 
and is made strong by it. The flatterer is always a 
scoundrel, and the glad receiver of his falsehoods is 
always a fool — natural or otherwise. 

The desire for praise is often very strong in those 
who never do any thing to deserve it, and who are 
never ready to award it to those who have earned 
it. There are men in every community who are uni- 
versally recognized as supremely selfish, yet supremely 
greedy of praise. This desire does not arise from 
over-indulgence in the article, for they never had even 
a taste of it. They are known to be selfish and hard 
and mean, yet they long for praise and popularity, 
with a desire that is almost ludicrous. They never 
give a dollar to the poor, they never deny themselves 
for the good of others, they are shut up in themselves 
— without any good or great or generous qualities — 
12* 



274 Leffons in Life. 



yet they clutch at every word that sounds like praise 
as if they were starved. The only use of the desire 
in these men is to furnish the world with a nose by 
which to lead them. 

It is a mistake to suppose that praise should be ren- 
dered directly in all cases to the persons to whom it is 
due, for the relations between debtor and creditor may 
be such as to forbid it. I may be a humble admirer of 
some great and good man, who has been the doer of 
great and good deeds, but my personal relations to him 
may be such that it is not proper for me to approach 
him, and pay my tribute into his hands. Men are often 
careful of the channels through which the response to 
their deeds, in the hearts of other men, reaches them ; 
but I may discharge my debt, nevertheless, by sound- 
ing their praise in other ears. It is usually the work 
of those who stand next to a man, to gather up the 
tributes of a grateful and admiring community or peo- 
ple, and bear them to him to whom they belong. Be- 
cause I may not approach a praiseworthy man, with 
the offering which I feel to be his due, it is none the 
less incumbent upon me to discharge the debt. Just 
and generous praise will come from every just and gen- 
erous nature in some form, and will be deposited in 
some bosom subject to the draft of the owner. 

It is not easy for any man to work alone, out of the 
sight of his fellows, and beyond the recognition of his 



The Influence of Praife. 275 

deeds. However self-sufficient he may be, he is stronger, 
and he feels stronger, in the approbation of generous 
and appreciative hearts. We are very much in the 
habit of thinking that men of great minds and noble 
deeds and self-reliant natures do not need the approval 
of other minds, and do not care for it ; but God never 
lifted any man so far above his fellows that their voices 
were not the most delightful sounds that reached him. 
If this be true of great natures, how much more evi- 
dently true is it of smaller natures ! We, the people 
of the world, go leaning on each other ; and we totter 
sometimes, even to falling, when a shoulder drops from 
underneath our hand. We need encouragement with 
every step. In the path of worthy doing, we need some 
loving voice to witness with our approving consciences, 
that we have done that which becomes us as men and 
women. We long to hear the sentence, " well done, 
thou good and faithful servant," from day to day ; and 
when we hear it, we are ready for further labor. We 
need also to give this daily meed of praise to those who 
deserve it, that we may keep ourselves unselfish, and 
root out from ourselves all niggardliness. We owe it to 
ourselves to pay off every debt as soon as it is incur- 
red, and never, under auy selfish motive, to withhold it. 
It is notorious that the finest spirits of the world, 
and the world's greatest benefactors, have gone through 
life unrecognized. They have lain down in their graves 



276 Lefifons in Life. 

at last without having received a tithe of the debt which 
their generation owed to them. When the turf has 
closed over their bosoms, and the mean jealousies of 
their cotemporaries have been vanquished by death, then 
whole nations have thronged to do them honor. Songs 
have been sung to their memory ; and the words of praise 
which would have done so much to cheer and strengthen 
them once, are poured out in abundance when the need 
of them is past. Stately monuments are erected to 
them, and their children are petted and caressed, and 
a tardy, jealous, and hypocritical world strives to win 
self-respect by the payment of a debt long overdue. 
" Speak nothing but good of the dead " is a proverb 
that had its birth in the world's sense of its own mean- 
ness, — the consciousness that it had not done justice to 
the dead while they were living. Many a man is sys- 
tematically abused during all his active life, only to lie 
down in his grave amid the laudations of a nation. I 
know of nothing in all the exhibitions of human nature 
meaner than this. It amounts to a virtual confession 
of fraud. It is the acknowledgment of a debt, which, 
while the creditor could get any benefit from it, the 
world refused to pay. Posthumous fame may be a very 
fine thing ; but I have never known a really worthy 
mau, with a healthy nature and a healthy character, who 
did not prize far above it the love, the confidence, and 
the praise of the generation to which he gave his life. 



The Influence of Praife. 277 

It is the mark of a noble nature to be quick to rec- 
ognize that which is praiseworthy in others, and ready 
on the moment to award to it its fitting meed. Such a 
nature looks for that which is good in men, sees it, en- 
courages it, and gives it the strength of its indorsal. 
All that is noble in other men thrives in the presence 
of such a nature as this. It is sunshine and showers 
and healthful breezes to all that is amiable and laudable 
in the souls around it. Woman grows more womanly 
and lovable and happy in its presence. Men grow he- 
roic and unselfish by its side. Children gather from it 
encouragement and inspiration, and impulse and direc- 
tion into a beautiful life. "What knows the charming 
wife whom we lay in the tomb, of the tears we shed 
above her, of the endearments we lavish upon her mem- 
ory, and of the praises of her virtue with which we bur- 
den the ears of our friends? This same wife would have 
drunk such expressions during her life with satisfaction 
and gratification beyond expression. Why can death 
alone teach us that those whom we love are dear ? Why 
must they be placed forever beyond our sight before 
our lips can be unsealed ? Why must it be that in our 
public, social, and family life we have penalties in abun- 
dance, but no rewards — censure in profusion, but no 
praise — fault-finding without stint of freedom, but ap- 
probation dealt out by constrained and niggardly 
hands ? 



LESSON XX. 

UNNECESSABY BUEDENS. 

"I groan beneath this cowardice of heart 
Which rolls the evil to he borne to-day 
Upon to-morrow, loading it with gloom." 
Axexasdeb Smith. 

"There are two ways of escaping from suffering; the one by rising above 
the causes of conflict, the other by sinking below them; for there is quiet in the 
soul when all its faculties are harmonized about any centre. The one is the re- 
ligious method; the other is the vulgar, worldly method. The one is called 
Christian elevation; the other, stoicism.'' — Beechee. 

THERE were few houses of the old time in New 
England that did not contain a well-thumbed 
volume of the Pilgrim's Progress ; and there were few 
children who did not become acquainted with its con- 
tents, either through its text or its pictures. I am 
sure that all the children felt as I did — very tired with 
sympathy for the poor pilgrim who was obliged to lug 
that ugly pack from picture to picture, and very " glad 
and lightsome" when at last it fell from his shoulders, 
and went tumbling down the hill. We did not marvel 



Unneceffary Burdens, 



279 



that " he stood still awhile, to look and wonder," or 
that " he looked, and looked again, even till the springs 
that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks." 
It was a great thing for a man who was bent on prog- 
ress to be freed from an unnecessary burden ; and 
it may be pleasant to know that at the foot of the hill 
of life the same sepulchre which swallowed the burden 
of Bunyan's Pilgrim, so that he " saw it no more," still 
stands open, and has room in it for all the burdens of 
all the pilgrims there are in the world. 

I wonder whether all the pilgrims who have under- 
taken the journey " from this world to that which is 
to come " ever lose the pack whose fastenings were so 
quickly dissolved when our favorite old Pilgrim looked 
upon the Cross ? I doubt it. I hear many people 
groaning throughout the whole course of their Chris- 
tian experience with the oppressive weight of this same 
burden. Instead of losing it at the sight of the cross, 
they hold to it, and will not let it go. They mean well 
enough ; but they do not understand that the cross 
was reared, and the meek sufferer nailed to it, that 
the burden of the penitent soul might be forever rolled 
off. They carry their own sins, and never yield the 
pack to Him who bore it for them " in His own body, 
on the tree." They are never " light and gladsome " 
with a sense of great relief; and their Christian prog- 
ress is sadly impeded by the burden from which the 



280 



LeiTons in Life, 



central truth of the Christian scheme releases them. 
If there be any such thing as forgiveness, then there 
is such a thing as release ; but I think there are many 
subjects of free and full forgiveness who insist on carry- 
ing their old, dirty packs to their graves, staggering 
under them all the way. 

But this is not what I started to write about. A 
great many men carry their life as an author carries a 
book which he is writing — never losing the sense of 
their burden. When a writer undertakes a book, and 
feels the necessity of perfect continuity of thought and 
symmetry of structure, he can never lay it wholly aside. 
When once he has taken up the first chapter, and com- 
prehended his materials and machinery and end, he 
does not dare to lay down his work, or diverge from the 
grand channel of his thought, until the last chapter is 
finished. He can take no three months' vacation ; he 
can read no books that do not contribute to his prog- 
ress in the chosen direction ; he can never wholly lay 
aside the burden that is on him. It is like lifting uj)on 
one's shoulder the end of a long pole, and then walking 
under it from end to end. The burden upon the shoul- 
der is not relieved until the whole length has been 
passed, and it drops as we walk from under it. Such 
is the way that many men, and, perhaps, most men, 
carry life. If their business troubles them, they have 
no power to throw it off, and no disposition to try to 



UnnecefTary Burdens. 281 

do it. They are entirely aware that they gain nothing 
by carrying their tedious burden, but they carry it. 
Not content with doing their duty, and trying their 
best while actively engaged, they take home with them 
a long face, breathe sighs around them in the saddest 
fashion, and really unfit themselves for the healthy 
exercise of their reason, and the active employment 
of their faculties. 

With men of this stamp, it makes little difference 
whether they are prosperous or otherwise. If times 
are good, and they really have no fault to find with 
matters as they exist, they become troubled about bad 
times that may possibly lie just ahead. " Oh, it's all well 
enough to-day," they say, " but you can't tell what is 
coming;" so they bind the burden of the future upon 
them, and undertake to steal a march on God's provi- 
dence. Such a thing as doing the duty of a single 
day, and doing it well, and then throwing off the bur- 
den of care, and having a good time in some rational 
way, until the hour comes for the commencement of 
the next day's duty, they are strangers to. They 
walk into their houses with a cloud upon their faces. 
They have no words of cheer for those whom they have 
left at home during the day. They are moody and 
sullen and sad — absorbed by their troubled thoughts — 
taking no interest in the schemes, and having no sym- 
pathy with the trials, of their wives and children, and 



282 Leffons in Life. 

making no effort to relieve themselves of their burdens. 
If they pray at all, they practically pray like this: 
" Give us this day our daily bread, and to-morrow, 
and next day, and the day after, and next year, and 
fifty years to come ; and lest Thou shouldst forget it, 
or neglect to answer us, we have undertaken to look 
after the matter ourselves." 

To say nothing of the constant sadness, uneasiness, 
and discomfort of such a life as this, to all those who 
lead it, and to all who are intimately associated with 
them, the permanent effect of it upon the character of 
its subjects is to make them selfish and hard, and small 
and mean. Whatever may be their circumstances, they 
become sensitive upon any expenditure of money for 
purposes beyond the simplest necessities of personal 
and family life. This , result is both natural and inevi- 
table. A man whose life, in and out of his counting- 
room, is absorbed by business, ceases, at last, to be 
any thing but a man of business ; and his mind con- 
tracts and hardens down to its central, motive idea. 
That which becomes the dominant aim and the grand 
end of life, always determines the character of fife ; 
and I have known young men, even before they have 
approached middle age, to become mean and miserly 
to such a degree as to disappoint and disgust their 
friends, simply in consequence of a few years' absorp- 
tion in business. Business is not life, nor is it life's end. 



UrmecefTary Burdens. 283 

It is simply a means of life ; and all true living lies 
outside of it. Ministry is the mission of business — 
ministry to necessity, to comfort, and to a personal, 
family, and social life into which business never enters, 
save with an unwelcome foot and a disturbing hand. 
This everlasting hugging of the burden of business, is, 
therefore, not only a painful task, but it is permanently 
damaging to all who indulge in it. 

" It is very easy to talk," says my friend, with a 
load upon his shoulders, " but talking does not pay 
notes at the bank, and keep creditors easy, and 
provide for one's family." Granted : and now will 
you be kind enough to tell me how many notes you 
ever paid at bank, and how much provision you ever 
made for your family by " mugging " over your troub- 
les out of business hours ? If your retort is good for 
any thing, mine is. You never accomplished one good 
thing in your life by making yourself and others un- 
happy through constant dwelling upon trouble when 
not engaged in active efforts to extricate yourself from 
it. You never gained a single inch of progress by 
dwelling upon miscarriages in business which you could 
not avoid. All your absorption, all your sad reflection, 
all your misgivings about the future, all your care 
beyond the exercise of your best ability in action, has 
not only been utterly useless, but it has injured the 
comfort of all around you, destroyed the peace of your 



284 Leffons in Life. 

life, cheated you out of the reward of your labor, and 
made a smaller, harder, meaner man of you. If any 
good result could be secured by carrying the burden 
of your business into all your life, then there would be 
some apology for it ; but you know that no such result 
can be secured. " It is very easy to talk," my friend 
persists in saying, " but one cannot always command 
one's mind, in such a matter as this." Did you ever 
try ? Have you ever systematically tried to do this ? 
Is it your regular aim, after you have discharged the 
business of the day, to throw off care until the next 
day's business is undertaken ? No ? Then how do 
you know whether it is easy or not ? 

I believe it is in the power of every man, who has 
not too long abused himself, to lajr aside every night 
his pack of mental care and anxiety, and enter into 
life. lSTot only this, but I believe that it is absolutely 
essential to his business success that he do this. A man 
who dwells constantly upon the dark side of his affairs, 
and is troubled and gloomy in his apprehensions con- 
cerning the future, becomes a weak and timid man — 
disqualified in many essential respects for the work of 
his life. His mind needs rest and revivification. Sup- 
pose an ass were to be treated in the manner in which 
men treat themselves. Suppose the burden which we 
place upon him during the day were kept lashed to his 
back at night, so that he must bear it, either standing 



Unneceffary Burdens. 285 

or lying, off duty as well as on. How long would he 
be worth any thing for labor ? The illustration is 
apposite in every particular. If the mind is to be kept 
fit for business, it is at regular periods to be kept out 
of business. A great multitude of business failures are 
attributable, I have no doubt, to the debilitating and 
damaging effect of carrying the burdens of business 
between business hours. Men become in a measure 
sick and insane by dwelling upon their affairs, when 
they should be receiving rest and refreshment. 

Again, men who insist upon keeping their packs 
upon their shoulders, practically deny the existence of 
the providence of a Being superior to themselves, and 
dominant in all human affairs. If I were to say to one 
of these men : " you do not believe in Providence at 
all," he would accuse me of a harsh judgment, and feel 
injured by it ; but it is certainly legitimate for me to 
ask him what evidence he gives of his belief. All, 
indeed, profess to believe in Providence, in a certain 
general way. The popular idea is very foggy upon 
the matter. We somehow imagine that God knows 
every thing in general and nothing in particular — that 
He takes interest in, supervision of, and controlling 
influence over, matters at large, with an imperial dis- 
regard of details — that He moulds with a majestic hand 
the character and destiny of nations, but never conde- 
scends to meddle with the small and insignificant 



286 Leffons in Life. 



affairs of individuals. Providence, in this view, would 
seem to be very much like certain tongs used in a 
blacksmith's shop, whose jaws do not wholly close — 
convenient for handling large pieces of iron, but in- 
capable of grasping a nail. Or, Providence is like a 
great general, who only directs the movements of large 
bodies of men, deals only with the officers, and never 
thinks of so small a thing as looking after the blanket 
of a private soldier, or dressing a wounded finger. 

It is very easy to perceive that such a Providence 
as this has no practical value in every-day, individual 
life. Yery evidently it is not that Providence which 
numbers the hairs of men's heads, and without whose 
notice not a sparrow falls to the ground. One is a Provi- 
dence made by men who undertake to measure God by 
themselves ; the other is the Providence revealed in 
the Bible. God exercises a special providence, which 
reaches to the minutest affairs of the most insignificant 
man, or we are all in a condition of essential orphanage. 
A special Providence denied, and prayer becomes a 
mockery, devotion a deceit, and the sense of individ- 
ual responsibility slavery to a superstitious idea. Now 
I do not pretend to address myself to men who do 
not believe in prayer. I know men well enough to 
know that there are very few of them who do not be- 
lieve in prayer, and that there are very few of them 
who do not, particularly in moments of danger, pray. 



UnnecefTary Burdens. 287 

Deep down under the thickest crusts of depravity there 
lies the conviction, always ready to rise in painful emer- 
gencies, that God takes cognizance of every man, and 
is able to help him. Smooth away the idea of Provi- 
dence as we may, into an unmeaning generality, the 
time comes, in every man's life, when he recognizes the 
fact that God is dealing with him ; and he may as well 
recognize the fact all the time as when he is driven to 
feel that he has no help in himself. 

So, if there be a special Providence, it is a Provi- 
dence to be trusted ; and the man who believes in it 
has no apology for carrying a single unnecessary bur- 
den. This providence in all human affairs, is like the 
principle of vitality in the vegetable world. It does 
not release us from effort, in every legitimate and 
needful way, for the accomplishment of our laudable 
purposes ; but when our efforts are complete, it takes 
care of the rest. "What should we think of the farmer 
who could never roll the burden of his cornfield from 
his mind, and who, after hoeing his ground repeatedly, 
and cutting or covering every weed, should go night 
after night and sit up with it, and think of it, and dream 
of it all the while ? He has done all there is for him 
to do, and beyond this he cannot control an hour of 
sunshine, a drop of dew, or a single cloud-full of rain. 
He cannot influence the law of growth in any particu- 
lar. His field is in the control of a power entirely 



288 Leffons in Life. 

above and beyond him ; and every thought he gives 
to it, after having done what he can for its prosperity, 
is utterly useless. It is his business to trust. Having 
done what he can, the remainder is in the hands of Him 
who feeds the springs of being with light and heat and 
moisture. It is thus that man's affairs grow while he 
sleeps. The hand that ministers to every plant will 
not fail to minister to him for whose use the plant was 
made. 

Why do not men trust in Providence ? Simply 
because, in their usual moods and in their usual cir- 
cumstances, they do not believe in it. There is no 
other explanation. Tou, my friend, who carry your 
burdens around on your shoulders all the time, and 
who, perhaps, pray every morning and every night, do 
not believe in Providence. You do not feel that you 
can trust Providence. You assent to all that I say 
upon the subject, but, after all, your belief in Provi- 
dence has no genuine vitality. You do not believe in 
it as you believe in the purity of your wife or the honor 
of your friend. You do not rely upon it for an hour. 
You do nod your head and say — " yes, yes ; " and you 
think you are sincere ; but you deceive yourself. So 
long as you persist in carrying your pack, which is a 
very unpleasant burden, as you know, you do not be- 
lieve in Providence ; else you would trust in it. You 
are tired and harassed by your daily lab or; and it is 



Unneceffary Burdens. 289 

very natural to suppose that if you could remove your 
burden each evening, and place it in the charge of one 
whom you believe would take care of it, you would do 
it with gladness. You fail to do it, and what is the 
natural conclusion ? It is that your belief in Provi- 
dence is a humbug. You believe in the honor of your 
friend, and you trust it. You believe in the honesty 
and ability of your creditor, and you trust him. You 
trust every thing and everybody that you firmly be- 
lieve in ; and the only reason under heaven why you 
do not roll off the burden that oppresses you, every 
day and every hour of your life, and commit it to the 
care of Providence, is, that you do not believe in Prov- 
idence. 

We are in the habit of talking about the world as a 
world of care, and speaking of human life as insepara- 
bly accompanied by trouble. This is, indeed, the truth; 
but if we were to remove from the world all its useless 
care, and take from life all its unnecessary trouble, 
they would be transformed into such bright and pleas- 
ant things that we should hardly know them. I know 
very few men and women who do not bear about with 
them care and trouble which God never put upon them, 
and which He has no desire to see upon their shoulders. 
It does not belong to them. It relates to things that 
are in the realm of Providence alone, or to things over 
which they have no control. The future is God's, but 
13 



290 Leffons in Life. 

they voluntarily take it upon their shoulders, and try 
to bear it. They pluck a section of God's eternity out 
of His hands, and groan with the burden. They as- 
sume care which is not their own — which belongs to 
the Controller of then- lives, and the Governor of the 
universe. It is care for that which is beyond human 
care — anxiety for that which anxiety cannot reach — 
trouble about that which we can neither make nor 
mend — that oppresses humanity. We can bear our 
daily burdens very well. We can go through our reg- 
ular hours of bodily and mental labor, and feel the bet- 
ter rather than the worse for it ; but to care for that 
which our care cannot touch, and to be troubled about 
that which is entirely beyond our sphere — this is the 
burden that breaks the back of the world — this is the 
burden which we bind to our shoulders with obstinate 
fatuity. 



LESSON XXI. 

PEOPEE PEOPLE AND PERFECT PEOPLE. 

" I must have liberty 
Withal, as large a charter as the wind 
To blow on whom I please." 

Shakspeke. 

"They say best men are moulded out of faults." 
The Same. 

" There's no such thing in nature, and you'll draw 

A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw." 

Sheffield. 

NATURE calls for room and for freedom — room 
for her ocean and freedom for its waves ; room 
for her rivers and freedom for their flowing ; room for 
her forests and freedom for every tree to respond to 
the influences of earth and sky according to its law. 
Exceedingly proper things are not at all in the line of 
nature. Nature never trims a hedge, or cuts off the 
tail of a horse. Nature never compels a brook to flow 



292 LeiTons in Life, 

in a right line, but permits it to make just as many- 
turns in a meadow as it pleases. Nature is very care- 
less about the form of her clouds, and masses and colors 
them with great disregard of the opinions of the paint- 
ers. Nature never thinks of smoothing off her rocks, 
and cleaning away her mud, and keeping herself trim 
and neat. She does very improper things in a very 
impulsive manner. Instead of contriving some safe, 
silent, and secret way to dispose of her electricity, she 
comes out with a blinding flash and a stunning crash, 
and a rush of rain that very likely fills the mountain 
streams to overflowing, and destroys bridges and 
booms, and cabins and cornfields. On the whole, though 
nature keeps up a respectable aj)pearance, I suppose 
that, in the opinion of my particular friend Miss Nancy, 
she would be improved by taking a few lessons of a 
French gardener, and reading savage criticisms on 
Ruskin. 

T have alluded to my particular friend Miss Nancy. 
Perhaps I ought to say, at starting, that Miss Nancy 
is a man, and that I use the name bestowed upon him 
by his enemies, because it is, in a very important sense, 
descriptive. Miss Nancy's boots are faithfully polished 
twice a day. His linen is immaculate ; and the tie of 
his cravat is square and faultless. He never makes a 
mistake in grammar while engaged in conversation. 
He is versed in all the forms and usages of society, and 



Proper People and Perfed People. 293 

particularly at home in gallant attention to what he 
calls " the ladies." He seems to have lost every rough 
corner, if he ever had one. In politics and religion, he 
is just as proper as in social life. The most respectable 
religion is his religion ; and the politics that shun ex- 
tremes are his politics. I think he is what they call a 
conservative. At any rate, I never knew him to do a 
rash or impulsive thing, or speak an improper word in 
his life. I think he is as nearly perfect as any man I 
ever saw. 

But, after all, Miss Nancy is not a popular man. 
He will probably live and die an old bachelor, because 
all the women will persist in laughing at him. He is 
certainly good-looking, his dress is unexceptionable, 
his manners are " as good as they make them," and 
his morals are as proper as his manners; yet I have not 
yet seen the woman who would speak a pleasant word 
of my friend. He is decidedly a " woman's man," yet 
no woman will own him, and no woman feels comfort- 
able with him. His language is so carefully guarded 
against all impropriety of style and structure, that she 
feels as if he were criticizing every word she utters, 
as well as measuring his own. His manners are so very 
proper that they are formal and constrained, and make 
her uncomfortable. His sentiments and opinions are 
so very conservative, that they have no vitality in 
them. With a curious perverseness, the most gentle 



294 Leffons in Life. 

and accomplished women will turn from him with a 
sense of relief, to join in the society of a hearty fellow 
with a loud laugh and a dash of slang, and a free and 
easy way with him. It may be difficult to explain all 
this, but it is true. An exceedingly proper man is 
never a popular man. That life which is controlled by 
rigid and unvarying rules, and regulated by conven- 
tionalities in every minute particular, and restrained in 
every impulse by notions of propriety, is unlovely and 
unnatural, and can never be otherwise. 

The instincts of men are always right in this and all 
cognate matters. All formalism is offensive to good 
taste. The painter does not study landscape in a gar- 
den. Formal isles, closely-trimmed trees, rose bushes 
on the top of tall sticks, flowers tied to supports, vines 
trained upon trellises, lakes with clipped and pebbled 
margins and India-rubber swans — these are not pic- 
turesque. There is no more inspiration in them than 
there would be in a row of tenement houses in the 
city. The painter looks for beauty out where nature 
reigns undisturbed amid her imperfections,— where the 
aisles are made by the deer going to his lick ; where 
the trees are never trimmed save by the lightning or 
the hurricane; where the rose-bushes spread their 
branches and the vines trail themselves at liberty ; and 
where the lake looks up into the faces of trees centu- 
ries old, and hems itself in with thickets of alders and 



Proper People and Perfed People. 295 

green reaches of flags and rushes, and throbs to the 
touch of the mountain breeze, while on its bosom 

" The black duck, with her glossy breast 
Sits swinging silently." 

A little child whose head is piled with laces and 
ribbons, whose dress is a mass of embroidery, and who 
is booted and gloved and otherwise oppressed by pa- 
rental vanity and extravagance, is not picturesque, any 
further than its face goes. The portrait painter will 
cling to the face and let the clothes alone. All this 
trickery of art, brought into comparison or contrast 
with the simple beauty of nature, is offensive. Yet a 
little beggar boy, with an old straw hat on, and with 
bare, brown feet, and a burnt shoulder which his torn 
shirt refuses to cover, would be a painter's joy. Here 
would be drapery that he would delight to paint, sim- 
ply because there would be no formality about it. It is 
impossible for us to know how ridiculous a dress-coat 
is until we see it in a statue. We are obliged to put 
all our modern sages and heroes into togas and blank- 
ets and long cloaks in order to make them presentable 
to posterity. 

We never find groups of accordant, striking facts 
like these — and their number could be largely increased 
— without rinding that they are all strung together by 
an important law. All life demands room and freedom — 



296 Leffons in Life. 

freedom to manifest itself in every way, according to 
the law of its being and the range of its circumstances. 
All life is individual and characteristic, and comes re- 
luctantly under the sway of outside forces. It is not 
natural to be proper, or to love propriety. In saying 
this I simply mean that it is against nature to bring 
one's individuality under the curbing and controlling 
hands of others — to make the notions of the world the 
law and limit of one's liberty, and to square every 
word and every act by arbitrary rules imposed by 
cliques and customs. A man who has been clipped in 
all his puttings-forth, and modelled by outside hands 
and outside influences, until it is apparent that he is 
governed from without rather than from within, is just 
as unnatural an object as a tree that has been clipped 
and tied and bent until its top has grown into the form 
of a cube. Thus the reason why Miss Nancy is not 
popular, and why the women refuse to delight in him, 
is, that he is not his own master — that he has, in him- 
self, no independent life. It is not proper that he give 
utterance to his impulses ; — so he suppresses them. It 
is not proper that he frankly reveal the emotions of his 
heart ; so he conceals them. It is not proper that he 
enter enthusiastically into any work or any pleasure ; 
so he is a constant check to the enthusiasm of others. 
It is not proper that he speak the words that spring to 
his lips when his weak sensibilities are touched ; so he 



Proper People and Perfed People. 297 

studies his language, and shapes his phrases to the ac- 
cepted models. Thus is he shortened in on every side, 
until his individuality is all gone, and the humanity in 
him becomes as characterless as its expression. Every 
utterance of his life is made with a well-measured ref- 
erence to certain standards to which he is an acknowl- 
edged slave. 

A scrupulously proper man is often a self-deceiver, 
and not unfrequently an intentional deceiver of others. 
I do not say that he is necessarily a scoundrel or a fool. 
He may be very little of either, and he may be a little 
of both. These two words, which sound rather roughly, 
will give us, I think, a faithful index to his character. 
A man who is punctiliously proper has usually become 
so in consequence of an attempt to cover up his mental 
deficiencies or his moral obliquities. Punctilious pro- 
priety is always pretentious, and pretentiousness is 
always an attempt at fraud. A shallow mind is very 
apt to clothe itself with propriety as with a garment. 
A brain that cannot handle large things very often un- 
dertakes to manage a multiplicity of little things, and 
runs naturally into those minute proprieties of life which 
are showy, and which appear to the ignorant to indi- 
cate great powers and acquisitions in reserve. Most 
proper men are nothing but a shell, although many of 
them pass with the world for more. Their life is all 
on the outside, and is placed and kept there for show. 
13* 



298 Leffons in Life. 

We approach them, and very frequently find them so 
well guarded that we do not get a look into their emp- 
tiness for a long time. We examine them as we would 
a hillside strewn with fragments and planted with bould- 
ers of marble. We are obliged to dig to learn whether 
the signs we see are from an out-cropping ledge, or an 
outside deposition. Sometimes the plunge of a single 
question will reveal the whole story. A man with 
large brains and a large life in him has something to 
do besides attending to the notions of other people. 
He has at least no motive to deceive the world by striv- 
ing to appear to be more than he is. 

I have said that there are some men who are punc- 
tiliously proper for the purpose of covering their moral 
obliquities. The virtue of a prude is always to be sus- 
pected. "So you have been looking after the bad 
words," was savage old Dr. Johnson's reply to the 
very proper woman who found fault with him for intro- 
ducing so many indecent words into his dictionary. 
There are few men who have not frequently, during 
their lives, broken their way through a crust of punc- 
tilious propriety into hearts full of all the blackness of 
sensuality and sin. The world is full of hypocrisy, and 
hypocrisy is nothing more than appearing to be what 
one is not. Indeed, I believe that one of the strongest 
motives operative in the world to render men scrupu- 
lously proper in their deportment and behavior is sin. 



Proper People and Perfed People. 299 

I make no hesitation in saying that shallowness and 
sensuality are the leading ingredients in the majority 
of the exceedingly proper characters with which I am 
acquainted. 

Leaving this particular phase of my subject, I wish 
to call attention to the well-recognized fact that all 
perfect people are bores. A perfect character in a 
novel has no more power over a reader — no more foot- 
hold among his sympathies — than a proposition in math- 
ematics would have. Of all stupid creations that the 
brain of man has given birth to, there are none so stu- 
pid as the perfect men and women whom we find upon 
the pages of fiction. Sometimes we find in actual life 
a character so symmetrical, so rounded off at the cor- 
ners, and smoothed at the edges, and polished on the 
sides, and unexceptionable in all its manifestations, that 
we cannot find fault with it ; yet we find it impossible 
for us to love it. Such a character gets beyond the 
reach of our sympathies. Human affection is like ivy. 
It cannot cling to glass ; it must plant its feet in im- 
perfections. It is not to be denied that imperfection 
is the true flavor of humanity. The mind refuses to 
sympathize where it does not exist. What the world 
would call a perfect man — what would be adjudged a 
perfect man by the best standards — would be as taste- 
less as a last year's apple. A perfect woman could no 
more be loved than she could be hated. I never saw 



300 LeiTons in Life. 

a man with a perfect face — a face modelled so symmet- 
rically and so perfectly that no fault could be found 
with it — who was not more or less a numskull. A 
pretty man is always a pretty fool ; and the more sym- 
metrical the features of a woman are, the more does 
she approach to the style of beauty and expression and 
native gifts of a porcelain doll. The mind and the 
character can be so symmetrical that they will lose all 
charm and all significance. They descend into simple 
prettiness, which is simple insipidity. 

I say that imperfection is the true flavor of human- 
ity. In explanation, I ought to say that all individu- 
ality is either based upon it or pre-supposes it. For 
instance: the preponderance of certain powers and 
qualities of mind and character in me, over certain 
other powers and qualities, and the weakness and 
imperfection of these latter as related to the former, 
and to the individualities of others, make my individu- 
ality what it is. If in me all mental and moral powers 
were in equipoise — if I were a symmetrical man, as the 
first Adam may possibly have been — I should have no 
individuality, no qualities that would distinguish me — 
no weaknesses that would furnish footholds for human 
sympathy — no freshness and flavor. A whole world 
full of perfect men and women, each one like every 
other, would be unutterably stupid. Where there is 
no weakness there is no individuality ; where there is 



Proper People and Perfeft People. 301 

no individuality there is no true humanity ; where there 
is no true humanity there is no sympathy ; and where 
there is no sympathy there is no pleasure. We demand 
that a man shall live according to his law — develop 
himself according to his law — manifest and express 
himself according to his law ; and then he will become 
the object of our sympathy or antipathy, according to 
our law. We demand that the true flavor of every 
individuality shall be declared, and not be masked by 
the imposition of conventional regulations. 

If every tree in the world were perfect, according 
to any recognized standard, then all the trees would 
be alike, and would cease to be attractive and pictur- 
esque. We keep all perfect things out of pictures, 
because they are formal and tasteless. A bran new 
cottage, with a picket fence around it, and every thing 
cleaned up about it, is too perfect to be picturesque. 
An old, tumble-down mill, with rude and rotten tim- 
bers, and a wheel outside, is decidedly picturesque, 
because its imperfections make it informal. The most 
unattractive of all houses is a model house. A house 
that no man can find fault with, is a house that no man 
can love. It is precisely thus with human character 
and with men. A proper, perfect, a model" man, is an 
unlovable man. A sphere cannot be made to fit an 
angle, and a spherical character has no point of sym- 
pathy with one that is thrown into the angles necessary 



302 Leffons in Life. 

for individuality. So we neither love symmetry and 
perfection in men, according to any recognized stand- 
ard, nor the appearance of them. We demand not 
only that men shall have individuality, but that they 
shall express it in their language and their lives. In 
society we demand variety ; and in order to have it, 
men must act out themselves. The harmony and 
sweetness of social life consist in the adjustment of 
the strong points of some to the weak points of others. 
With these facts so very evident as they must be 
to all thoughtful minds, it is strange that such an effort 
is made to bring all men to a certain standard and 
style of life. I do not believe there is a country on 
the face of the earth where public opinion and fashion 
and conventional and individual notions, exercise so 
despotic a sway as they do in America. There is, in 
this "free country," no play to individuality tolerated. 
No room is made for the peculiarities of a man — no 
freedom is given to his mode of manifestation. A man 
who has peculiar manners, and whose style of individu- 
ality is marked, has no room allowed to him at all. He 
is very likely to be called a fool, and laughed at by his 
inferiors. We take no pains to look through the out- 
side to find the heart and soul, and refuse to see excel- 
lence behind manifestations that offend our notions or 
our tastes. We go to hear a preacher, and if he do 
not happen to have the externals, and the style of 



Proper People and PerfeS People. 303 

delivery which we most admire, we condemn him at 
once. We make no room for his individuality, and 
allow to it no freedom of manifestation. Room .and 
freedom — that which the ocean has, that which the 
rivers have, that which the forest has, and that from 
which all of them derive their beauty and their glory 
— room and freedom are denied to men by men who 
need both, quite as much as their fellows. 

The choicest food of the gossips is the personal pecu- 
liarities of their acquaintances. The grand staple of 
ridicule is this same individuality, whose importance 
I have endeavored to illustrate. All the small wits of 
society busy themselves upon the eccentricities of those 
around them. Church and creed, party and platform, 
fashion and custom, all direct themselves against the 
development of individuality. Sensitive natures shrink 
before such an array of influences, and retire into them- 
selves, drawing back and keeping in check all their 
out-reaching individuality. Many a man, indeed, who 
would face a cannon's mouth without trembling, flinches 
when beset by ridicule. It is not the fault of society 
that the whole race of mankind are not reduced to a 
dead level of character, and a tasteless uniformity of 
life. Were it not that God does His work so strongly, 
it would have been undone long ago. As it is, we 
always have a few men and women who are true enough 
to God and themselves to keep the world from stagna- 



304 Leffons in Life. 

tion, and give zest to life. They sometimes shock Miss 
Nancy, but as they do not happen to care what Miss 
Nancy thinks of them, they manage to live and do 
something to keep Miss Nancy's friends from settling 
into chronic inanity. 



LESSON XXII. 

THE POETIC TEST. 

" I walked on, musing with myself 
On life and art, and whether, after all, 
A larger metaphysics might not help 
Our physics — a completer poetry 
Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants 
More fully than the special outside plans, 
Phalansteries, material institutes, 
The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries, 
Preferred by modern thinkers." 

Mks. Browning. 

THE highest poetry is the purest truth. To learn 
whether any thing is as it ought to he, we have 
only to learn whether it is truly poetical. It is a 
popular fallacy to suppose that poetical things are 
necessarily fanciful, or imaginative, or sentimental — 
in other words, that poetry resides in that which is 
both baseless and valueless. In the popular thought, 
poetry is shut out of the realm of truth and reality. 



306 Leffons in Life. 



The reason, I suppose, is, that poetry demands more 
of truth and harmony and beauty than is commonly 
found in the actualities of human life. 

Let us suppose that in a country journey we arrive 
at the summit of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming 
village unbosomed in trees from the midst of which 
rises the white spire of the village church. If we are 
in a poetical mood, we say : " How beautiful is this 
retirement ! This quiet retreat, away from the world's 
distractions and great temptations, must be the abode 
of domestic and social virtue — the home of content- 
ment, of peace, and of an unquestioning Christian faith. 
Fortunate are they whose lot it is to be born and to 
pass their days here, and to be buried at last in the 
little graveyard behind the church." As we see the 
children playing upon the grass, and the tidy matrons 
sitting in their doorways, and the farmers at work in 
the fields, and the quiet inn, with its brooding piazzas 
like wings waiting for the shelter of its guests, the 
scene fills us with a rare poetic delight. In the midst 
of our little rapture, however, a communicative villager 
comes along, and we question him. We are shocked 
to learn that the inn is a very bad place, with a drunken 
landlord, that there is a quarrel in the church which is 
about to drive the old pastor away, that there is not 
a man in the village who would not leave it if he could 
sell his property, that the women give a free rein to 



The Poetic Tell 307 

their propensity for scandal, and that half of the chil- 
dren of the place are down with the measles. 

The true poet sees things not always as they are, 
but as they ought to be. He insists upon congruity 
and consistency. Such a life should be in such a spot, 
under such circumstances ; and no unwarped and un- 
polluted mind can fail to see that the poet's ideal is the 
embodiment of God's will. The poet's Indian is very 
different frem the real native American who has been 
exposed to the corrupting influences of the white man's 
civilization. The poet insists on seeing in the American 
Indian a noble manhood, simple tastes, freedom from 
all conventionality, heroic fortitude, and all those ro- 
mantic qualities which a free forest life seems so well 
calculated to engender. He looks upon the deep, 
mysterious woods, traversed by nameless streams ; the 
majestic mountains, haunted by shadows ; the broad 
lakes, swept only by the wind and the wild man's oar, 
and he says : " it is fitting, and only fitting, that out 
of such a realm should come such a life." Which is the 
better and the more truthful Indian — that of the poet, 
or he who drank the rum of our fathers and then 
scalped them ? The poet's village is the model village, 
and the poet's Indian is the model Indian. Both are 
built of the best and truest materials that God furnishes, 
and we see that when the actual village and the real 
Indian are tried by the poetic standard, they are tried 



308 Leffons in Life 



by the severest standard that can be applied to them. 
The poet's ideal embodies God's ideal of a village and 
an Indian. 

The grand, basilar idea of American institutions is 
human equality — the idea embodied in the American 
Declaration of Independence, that men are created free 
and equal, each with an independent, and all with a 
co-ordinate, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. There is in this idea the highest poetry, 
because it is the transcendent truth ; and there is no 
true poetry this side of the highest truth. Poetry 
follows the universal law, and is dependent for its 
quality upon its materials. In the degree in which 
its materials are fictitious and artificial, is it poor and 
false. The Pilgrim's Progress is essentially better 
poetry than the Paradise Lost, because it contains 
more of the truth as it is in the divine life of man. 

The poetic test, then, is practically a very valuable 
one, in all the important matters that relate to our life. 
Much of that which is miscalled poetry has been based 
upon arbitrary and artificial distinctions in human society 
and human lot. The poet has often sung of thrones 
and palaces, of kings and queens, of men and women 
of gentle blood, of barons and knights and squires, of 
retainers and dependents, of patricians and plebeians, 
and thus drawn his grand interest from distinctions 
in which God and Nature have had no hand. There 



The Poetic Tell 309 

may be romance, fancy, imagination, sentiment, and 
even instruction in such compositions as these, but 
there is no poetry. They have not in them the immor- 
tal life and the motive power of truth. We have only 
to carry distinctions thus attempted to be glorified to 
their logical results to land in the slavery of the masses 
to the over-mastering few. Now there never was, and 
there never can be, any poetry in slavery. Since time 
began no true poet has undertaken to write a line in 
praise of slavery. Poets have always been, and they 
must necessarily forever be, the prophets and priests of 
freedom. Multitudes of men have undertaken to justify 
slavery by the Bible, by expediency, by history, by 
necessity, by philosophy, by the constitution of the coun- 
try ; but no man ever undertook to justify it by poetry. 
The most brilliant prize offered by a national committee 
for the best poem in praise of human slavery, would not 
be able to draw forth a single stanza from any man 
capable of writing a line of true poetry. Philosophical 
defences of slavery can be purchased, political justifica- 
tions can be had at the small price of a small office, and 
Christian apologies to order, but, thank God ! not one 
line in praise of slavery could be written by a true poet, 
if the wealth of the world were to be his reward. 

We have in the present age a sickly, sentimental 
humanity which is busily endeavoring to pervert the 
sense and love of justice in mankind. It regards the 



310 Leffons in Life. 

disposition to do wrong as a disease, to be treated with 
appropriate emollients applied over the heart, or some 
gentle opiate or alterative taken through the ears. 
It pities the murderer, and aims to give the impression 
to him and to the world that he is a victim to the bar- 
barous instincts of society in the degree by which his 
punishment is made severe. It aims to transform 
prisons into comfortable asylums, where those who 
have been so unfortunate as to burn somebody's house, 
or steal somebody's horse, or insert a dirk under some- 
body's waistcoat, may retire and repent of their little 
follies, and in the mean time get better food and lodg- 
ing than they were ever able to steal. Punishment — 
retribution — these are words which make them shudder. 
Nothing in their view is proper but such treatment 
of the criminal, be it soft or severe, as will contribute 
to his reformation. The criminal has forfeited no 
rights, and society has no claims upon him, if he 
only repents ; and all punishment inflicted beyond 
the measure necessary to secure repentance is cruel. 
We have a great deal of this ; and more or less it 
is modifying theological systems and vitiating public 
policy. It is carried to such an extent, often, as to make 
of the greatest criminals notable martyrs. Society and 
the victim of wrong-doing are both forgotten in sym- 
pathy for the wrong-doer. 

Now these sentimental sympathizers with criminals, 



The Poetic Teft. 311 

call themselves Christians, and are not willing to be- 
lieve that any man can, in a truly Christian spirit, 
oppose their theories and their influence. They have 
been able to blind almost every sense in a man except 
the poetic sense ; but to this they appeal in vain. 
"Poetic justice" maintains its purity. The reader of 
a novel, no matter how good or how bad he may be, 
demands that the villain of the book shall be punished 
as a matter of justice alike to him and to those who 
have been his victims. Nothing but justice — nothing 
but a fitting retribution — will satisfy. The poetic in- 
stinct demands a perfect system of rewards and punish- 
ments, and is as little satisfied when a hero succeeds 
indifferently, as when a scoundrel fails to be punished 
according to his deserts. There is no poetic fitness 
without justice — retribution, pound for pound, and 
measure for measure. Set any audience that can be 
gathered to watching a play in which criminal and 
crafty art is made to meet and master a guileless 
spirit and pollute a spotless womanhood, and the sym- 
pathies of the vilest will follow the victim, and, in the 
end, demand the punishment of the victor. Nothing 
will seem to any audience so entirely out of place as 
kind and gentle treatment toward the artful brute, and 
nothing more outrageously unjust than the idea that 
repentance is the principal end of his punishment. The 
poetic instinct of fitness once thoroughly roused, as it 



312 Leffons in Life. 

is in a story, a poem, or a play, will be satisfied with 
nothing but full suffering for every sin. Now I would 
trust this poetic instinct of fitness further than I would 
all the sympathies of the humanitarians, all the sophis- 
tries of the philosophers, all the subtleties of the theo- 
logians, and all the milder virtues of Christianity itself. 
To me, it is as authoritative as a direct revelation from 
God, and is equivalent to it. 

Again, nothing is more apparent in American char- 
acter and American life than a growing lack of rever- 
ence. It begins in the family, and runs out through 
all the relations of society. The parent may be loved, 
but he is much less revered than in the olden time. 
Parental authority is cast off early, and age and gray 
hairs do not command that tender regard and that 
careful respect that they did in the times of the fathers. 
In politics, it is the habit to speak in light and disre- 
spectful terms of those whose experience gives them 
the right to counsel and command. Young men talk 
flippantly of " fossils," and " old fogies," and wonder 
why men who have been buried once will not remain 
quietly in their graves. Of course, when such a* spirit 
as this prevails, there can be no reverence for authority, 
no respect for place and position, and no genuine and 
hearty loyalty. We nickname our Presidents ; and " old 
Buck" and " old Abe " are spoken of as familiarly as 
if they were a pair of old oxen we were in the habit of 



The Poetic Teft. 313 

driving. Every man considers himself good enough for 
any place, and great enough to judge every other man. 
If a pastor does not happen to suit a parishioner, the 
parishioner has no feeling of reverence for him that 
would hinder him from telling him so to his face. 
Every man considers himself not only as good and as 
great as any other man, but a little better and a little 
greater. No being but God is revered, and He, I fear, 
not overmuch. What we call " Young America " is 
made up of about equal parts of irreverence, conceit, 
and that popular moral quality familiarly known as 
" brass." 

It is the habit to applaud Young America — to 
magnify the superior wisdom and efficiency of young 
men, to treat old age familiarly, and to compel those 
of superior years to ignore the honors with which God 
has crowned them. " Every dog has his day," we say, 
and we are impatient of a man who declines to step 
into retirement the moment that his hair turns gray, 
to make room for some specimen of Young America 
with a snub nose and a smart shirt-collar. ISTow, how- 
ever this irreverence may be justified — and it is not 
only justified but shamelessly gloried in — it is not 
poetical. Poetry cannot be woven of improprieties. 
A people bowing with reverence to those in authority, 
and regarding with profound respect high official sta- 
tion ; a family of children clinging, even through a long 
14 



814 Leffons in Life. 



manhood and womanhood, around the form of an aged 
parent with assiduous attentions and tender reverence ; 
a community or a nation of young men looking to age 
for wisdom and for counsel ; universal respect for years 
on the part of the young — these are, and must forever 
remain, poetical. Out of reverence can be woven the 
most beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can con- 
ceive ; but Young America can no more excite poetic 
sentiment, or inspire poetic imaginations, than the sham 
Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse it drives. 
There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an 
irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will 
not stand the poetic test. 

Americans boast habitually ot their country, and 
their boastings always assume the poetic form. The 
ballot-box that they talk about is the ballot-box that 
ought to be and not the ballot-box that is. One would 
think, to hear what is said of the ballot-box, that it lit- 
erally shines with glory, &o that every American free- 
man who marches up to it to deposit the paper em- 
bodiment of his will, glows -like a God in its light, and 
grows godlike by his act. If we are to believe Mr. 
Whittier, the poor voter sings on election day : 

" The proudest now is but my peer, 
The highest not more high ; 
To-day, of all the weary year, 
A kin"; of men am I. 



The Poetic Ted 315 

To-day, alike are great and small, 

The nameless and the known ; 
My palace is the people's hall, 

The ballot-box my throne ! " 

This is a very splendid sort of a ballot-box, and lie is a 
very fine sort of an American who sings about it ; but 
what are the facts? There are a good many chances 
that the box stands in a corner grocery, and that the 
poor voter is led up to deposit his priceless ballot so 
drunk that he cannot walk without help. Mr. Whit- 
tier would have us believe that the poor voter sings : 

"To-day shall simple manhood try 
The strength of gold and land ; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 
The power in my right hand." 

The truth is that gold and land try the very " simple 
manhood " as a rule, and very much less than the wide 
world is sufficient to buy the power in a great multi- 
tude of poor voters' hands. The poet sees what the 
ballot-box may be, ought to be, and, in some rare in- 
stances, really is. He unerringly seizes upon the dig- 
nity and majesty of self-government, the equal rights 
and privileges of manhood, and the dissipation of all 
distinctions in the exercise of the political franchise 
among freemen. The great truth of human equality 
inspires him, and he uses the ideal and possible ballot* 
box to illustrate it, and thus furnishes the standard by 
which the real ballot-box is to be judged. 



316 Leffons in Life. 

The poetical view of our American system of gov- 
ernment is that all men have a voice in the govern- 
ment; that we choose our own rulers and make our 
own laws ; that no man has a hereditary right to rule, 
and that men are selected for the service of the people, 
in the construction and the execution of the laws, be 
cause of their fitness for office. Outside of this view, 
the American system of government has no beauty and 
no foundation in truth and justice. If we undertake to 
argue with a monarchist, we never bring forward any 
other. It has in it the essential element of poetry, be- 
cause it does justice to the nature and character of man, 
and describes a perfect political society. The poetical 
view of the American system of government, is, then, 
the highest view. It covers the sovereignty of the 
citizen, and the wisdom of the popular voice. Around 
this idea the poets have woven their noblest songs ; but 
again we ask what are the facts ? The people are led 
by the nose by politicians ; and not one officer of the 
government in one hundred is chosen to his place be- 
cause of his fitness for it. The people do not nominate 
those who shall rule them, or those who shall make 
laws for them. Those whom the politicians do not 
nominate for office, nominate themselves. The political 
machinery of America practically takes the choice of 
rulers and officers out of the hands of the people, and 
puts it into the hands of a set of self-appointed leaders, 



The Poetic Teft: . 317 

whose patriotism is partisanship, and whose principal 
aim is to serve themselves and their friends, and use 
the people for accomplishing their purposes. ISTo great- 
er fiction was ever conceived than the pleasant one that 
the people of America govern America. The people 
of America, except in certain political revolutions, have 
always been governed by a company of self-appointed 
and irresponsible men, whose principal work was to 
grind axes for themselves. The poetry of American 
politics is then the severest standard by which to judge 
the reality of American politics. 

Religious freedom is another poetical idea in which 
the American glories. It is essentially a poetical 
thought that every man is free to worship God accord- 
ing to the dictates of his own conscience — that there is 
no Church to domineer over the State, and no State to 
domineer over the Church, that the Bible is free, and 
that each individual soul is responsible only to its 
Maker. This great and beautiful liberty stirs us when 
we think of it as music would stir us, breathed from 
heaven itself. It is grand, God-begotten, belonging in 
the eternal system of things, full of inspiration. This 
religious freedom we claim as Americans. Some of 
us enjoy it ; but the number is not large. The free- 
dom of the sect is not greatly circumscribed, but the 
freedom of the individual is hardly greater in America 
than it is in those countries where an established church 



318 Leffons in Life. 

lays its finger upon every man. I would as soon be 
the slave of the Pope or the Archbishop as the slave of 
a sect. I would as readily put rny neck under the yoke 
of a national church as under the yoke of a sect. It 
does not mend the matter that the multitude are will- 
ing slaves, and it certainly mars the matter that the 
sects themselves do what they can, in too many in- 
stances, to circumscribe each the other's liberty. Sects 
are religiously and socially proscribed by sects. Take 
any town in America that contains half a dozen 
churches, representing the same number of religious 
denominations, and it will be found that, with one, and 
that probably the dominant sect, it will be all that a 
man's reputation and position are worth to belong to 
another sect. Perfect religious freedom in America 
there undoubtedly is ; but it is the possession of only 
here and there an individual. Prevalent uncharitable- 
ness and bigotry are incompatible with the existence of 
religious liberty anywhere. 

It is thus that the poetic instinct grasps at truth 
and beauty, and fitness and harmony, wherever it sees 
it, and it is thus that it furnishes us (subordinate only 
to special, divine revelation) with the most delicate 
tests of human institutions, customs, and actions. Lit- 
mus-paper does not more faithfully detect the presence 
of an acid than the poetic instinct detects the false and 
foul in all that makes up human fife. All that is grand 



The Poetic Teft. 319 

and good, all that is heroic and unselfish, all that is 
pure and true, all that is firm and strong, all that is 
beautiful and harmonious, is essentially poetical, and 
the opposite of all these is at once rejected by the un- 
sophisticated poetic instinct. 

Verily the poets of the world are the prophets of 
humanity ! They forever reach after and foresee the 
ultimate good. They are evermore building the para- 
dise that is to be, painting the millennium that is to 
come, restoring the lost image of God in the human 
soul. "When the world shall reach the poet's ideal, it 
will arrive at perfection ; and much good will it do the 
world to measure itself by this ideal, and struggle to 
lift the real to its lofty level. 



LESSON XXIII. 

THE FOOD OF LIFE. 

"To the soul time doth perfection give, 
And adds fresh lustre to her beauty still; 
And makes her in eternal youth to live 

Like her which nectar to the Gods doth fill. 
The more she lives, the more she feeds on truth ; 

The more she feeds, the strength doth more increase; 
And vrhat is strength, but an effect in youth 
"Which, if time nurse, how can it ever cease ? " 
Sis J. Davtes. 

AHORSE can live, and do a good deal of dull 
work, on hay; but spirit and speed require 
grain. There is no self-supplied, perennial fountain 
within the animal that enables him to expend more in 
the way of muscular power than he receives in the way 
of muscular stimulus and nourishment. Food, in its 
quality and amount, up to the limit of healthful diges- 
tion, is set over against, and exactly measures, under 
ordinary circumstances, the quality and amount of labor 



The Food of Life. 321 

of which a horse is capable. So, a cow can live on 
straw and corn-stalks ; but it would not be reasonable 
to suppose that she would give any considerable 
amount of milk upon so slender a diet. We do not 
expect rich milk, in large quantities, to be yielded by a 
cow that is not bountifully fed with the most nutri- 
cious food. The same fact attaches to land. We can- 
not get out of land more than there is in it ; and hav- 
ing once exhausted it, we are obliged to put into it, in 
fertilizers, all we wish to take from it in the form of 
vegetable growths. Wherever there is an outgo, there 
must be an equal income, or exhaustion will be the in- 
evitable consequence. 

The principle which these familiar facts so forcibly 
illustrate is a very important one, in its connection 
with human life. We cannot get any more out of hu- 
man life than we put into it. All civilization is an illus- 
tration of what can be accomplished by feeding the hu- 
man mind. All barbaric and savage life is an illustra- 
tion of mental and moral starvation. The differences 
among mankind are the results of differences in the 
nourishment upon which their minds are fed. Eunice 
Williams, who was taken captive by the savages of 
Canada a hundred and fifty years ago, was the daughter 
of a most godly minister, of the old Puritan stamp; 
but a very few years of savage feeding made h.r a 
savage. Her mind was cut off from all other varieties 
14* 



322 Leffons in Life. 

of nourishment, and could only tend to savage issues. 
She kept a knowledge of her history, and many years 
after her capture revisited her home, accompanied by 
her tawny husband ; but no persuasions could call her 
from her savage life and companionship. The conver- 
sion of men from heathenism to Christianity and Chris- 
tian civilization is accomplished by introducing new 
food into their moral and mental diet. " A change of 
pastures makes fat calves," we are told ; and any one 
who has noticed the effect upon an active mind of its 
translation from one variety of social and moral influ- 
ences to another, will recognize the truth of the 
proverb. 

If a man will call up his acquaintances, one by one, 
and mentally measure the results of their lives, he will 
be astonished to see how small those results are. He 
will also see that they are, under ordinary circum- 
stances, in the exact proportion to the amount, and in 
correspondence with the variety, of the food they take 
in. It is astonishing to see how little it takes to keep 
some people, and how very little such people become 
on their diet. A man who shuts himself away from all 
social life, and lays by his reading, and declines all food 
that addresses itself to his sensational and emotional 
nature, and refuses that bread of life which comes 
down from heaven, and feeds himself only with relation 
to the accomplishment of some petty work, will become 



The Food of Life. 323 

as thin and scrawny, mentally and morally, as the body 
of a half-starved Hottentot. It is the one curse of 
rural life that it does not have a sufficiency and a suffi- 
cient variety of food. The same scenes, the same faces, 
the same limited range of books, the same dull friends, 
exhausted long ago — no new nourishment for powers 
cloyed with their never-varying food — these are what 
make rural life, as it is usually lived, unattractive and 
most unfruitful. The fruits — the issues — of this life 
cannot be greater than the food it gets, and the food is 
very scanty. It is not necessary that it should be so, 
and sometimes it is not so ; but the rule of common 
rural life is insufficiency of mental food, and conse- 
quent poverty of manifestation. 

The utilitarian habits of ISTew England, originating 
in necessity, and far outliving the circumstances in 
which they had their birth, have tended more than 
any other cause to make New England character un- 
lovable. The saving of half-pence to add to one's store, 
and the denial to one's self and children of that which 
will delight the famished senses, and stir the thin emo- 
tions, and enlarge the range of experience, is the direct 
way of arriving at meanness of life. There are those 
who will not allow their families to cultivate flowers, 
because flowers are not useful, and they involve a waste 
of time and land. They will not have an instrument 
of music in their houses, because music is not useful, 



324 Leffons in Life. 

and it involves an expenditure of money, and the 
throwing away of a great deal of time. They will not 
buy pictures, because pictures are not useful, and be- 
cause they cost money ; so that many a rich man's parlor 
is as bare of ornament as a tomb would be. They will 
not attend a lecture, because, though it might furnish 
them with mental food for a month, it would not 
bring their shillings back to them. They will not attend 
a concert, because a concert is not useful. They will 
not hire a minister who possesses fine gifts — gifts that 
would enrich them mentally, morally, and socially — be- 
cause they cannot afford it. So they take up with 
ministerial dry nursing, and one another's dry expe- 
riences, as spiritual food, in order to save a few more 
dollars. 

There are a few of the severer virtues that will live 
upon a diet of this kind. Endurance, industry, a nega- 
tive purity, thrift, integrity — these can live, and do live, 
after a sort, on a plain and scanty diet, and these, as 
we know, abound in New England. But generosity, 
hospitality, charity, liberality — all those qualities that 
enrich the character, and all those virtues that enlarge 
it and give it fulness and beauty and attractiveness, 
are always wanting among the class that sacrifices 
every thing for use. More cannot be got out of any 
life than is put into it. Modern chemistry analyzes soils, 
and ascertains exactly what they need to make them 



The Food of Life. 325 

produce bountifully of any kind of grains and fruits. 
Wheat cannot be grown on land that does not contain 
the constituents of wheat ; and if it be desirable to grow 
wheat, those constituents must be added to the soil. 
If any mental soil does not produce those vital mani- 
festations and results which characterize a large, rich, 
and attractive life, then the constituents of that life 
must be introduced as nutriment. 

One of the common experiences in the world of 
authorship is the writing of a single successful book, 
and the failure of all that follow it from the same pen. 
The explanation is, that the first book is the result of 
a life of feeding, and those that follow it come from an 
exhausted mind. There are many writers who, as soon 
as they begin to write, stop feeding, and in a very short 
time write themselves out. The temptation of the 
writer is to seclusion. His labors in a measure unfit 
him for social life, and for mingling in the every-day 
affairs of men. He is apt to become warped in his 
sentiments, and morbid in his feelings, and to grow 
small and weak as his works increase. The greatest 
possible blessing to an author is compulsory contact 
with the world — every-day necessity to meet and min- 
gle with men and women — social responsibilities and 
business cares, and the consequent necessity of keep- 
ing up with the events and the literature of his time. 
An author in this position not only keeps a healthy 



326 LeiTons in Life. 

mind, but he takes in food every day which his indi- 
viduality assimilates to itself, and utters as the expres- 
sion of its life. I have no belief that Shakspeare would 
ever have given us his immortal plays, but for the 
necessities which brought him so much into contact 
with men. Outside of his authorship, he lived an active, 
practical life — trod the boards of a theatre, managed 
men, looked after his money, rubbed against society 
in multiplied ways — and kept himself strong, healthy, 
and abundantly fed with that food which was necessary 
to him. 

Shakspeare had genius, it is true, but genius with- 
out food is quite as helpless as a barren acre. All great 
geniuses are immense feeders. All true and healthy 
geniuses fasten for food upon every thing and every 
body. Their antennae are always out for the apprehen- 
sion of ideas, and their mouths always open for their 
reception. Walter Scott was engaged in the active 
duties of the legal profession when writing his novels, 
and there was not a legend of Scotland, nor a bit of 
history or gossip, nor an old story-teller that lived 
within fifty miles of him, that he did not lay under 
tribute for mental food. It is declared, to the everlast- 
ing disgrace of Goethe, that he practiced upon the affec- 
tions of women, even to old age, that he might gather 
food for poetry. Byron traversed Europe in search 
of adventure, and rummaged the scenes of legend and 



The Food of Life. 327 

story for food for his voracious senses and sensibilities. 
His Childe Harold is nothing but the record of his 
tireless foraging. All men who have produced much 
have fed bountifully. 

The writers are- few in whom we do not notice 
something painfully wanting. "We do not always un- 
derstand what it is, but we know that, while we may 
accord to them good sense, and even genius, they fail to 
satisfy us. There is some good thing which they lack — 
something unbalanced and partial and one-sided about 
them. We presume that this is often the result of a 
constitutional defect, but in most instances it is attribu- 
table to insufficient nourishment in some department 
of their nature. " All but," is the appropriate epitaph 
for the tombstone of many an author ; and if we look 
carefully into his history we shall find an answer to the 
question : " All but what ? " We shall find, perhaps, 
that he is a recluse, that his social nature is not fed at 
all, and that he is, of course, unsympathetic. This is 
a very frequent cause of dissatisfaction with an author, 
as it always gives a morbid tinge to his writings. 
Dickens is eminently a social man, and eminently 
healthy and sympathetic. Possibly an author may 
starve his senses and become purely reflective, yield- 
ing up his points of contact with the outside world, 
and shutting the channels by which the qualities of 
things find their way to his mind. ]N"ot unfrequently 



328 Leffons in Life. 



a man's domestic affections may be starved, or ill fed, 
and if so, the fact is sure to be betrayed in his writings. 
And if a writer's religious nature be starved, it inva- 
riably vitiates all his characteristic works. No man 
who shuts out God and heaven from his life can write 
without betraying the poverty of his diet. If an au- 
thor would write satisfactorily, touching all kinds of 
human nature and all sides of human nature, he must 
feed every department of his own nature, for he has 
nothing to give that he does not receive. 

As in animal, so in mental life, there are gorman- 
dizing and gluttony, tending always to paralysis of 
voluntary effort. The devouring of facts, as they are 
found both in nature and in books, indulgence in social 
pleasures immoderately and constantly, pietism that 
feeds exclusively upon the things of religion, the feast- 
ing of the imagination upon the creations of fiction— 
all these are debilitating ; and a blessed thing to the 
world is it that they unfit the mind for writing at all, 
as the overfeeding of the body unfits its organs for 
labor. Plethoric minds do not trouble the world with 
books, or with conversation, or with preaching. Activ- 
ity simply demands food enough, and in sufficient 
variety, to feed its powers while operative, from day 
to clay. This is the reason why immensely learned men 
have rarely done much for the world. Many of them 
have won reputations, like remarkably fat steers, for 






The Food of Life. 329 

breadth of back and depth of brisket, but they are 
never known to move more than their own enormous 
bulks. Beyond a certain point of mental feeding, over 
and above the necessities of labor, the mind gets sleepy 
and clumsy. 

I have alluded to authors, particularly, because, 
unlike the world in general, they give form and record 
to their life. The masses of men live as authors live, 
but their lives are not put down in books, so that the 
public may read and measure them. We will suppose 
that two men are fed upon the same diet. Each shall 
have sufficient food for his religious, social, esthetic, 
domestic, sensational, and emotional natures, yet only 
one of them shall embody in books the life which he 
draws from these varieties of nourishment. The other 
lives essentially the same life, but it fails of record. It 
may be as rich and characteristic, in every particular, 
as that of the author, but it fails of artistic form be- 
cause, perhaps, he lacks the peculiar mental gift re- 
quired for its construction. So the real life of the 
author and the life of his reader may be the same, 
the one having advantage over the other in no particu- 
lar, and the fact that one is embodied in artistic forms 
conferring upon it no essential excellence. What I 
have said about authors, therefore, applies to all man- 
kind, engaged in whatever calling or profession. If 
any portion of any man's nature be not well fed, he will 



330 Leffons in Life. 

betray the fact in his life. Poverty of food in any 
particular will surely bring poverty of manifestation 
in that department of life which is deprived of its 
natural nourishment. 

A familiar illustration of the failure of a life to se- 
cure its appropriate food, will be found in men and wo- 
men who live unmarried. An old bachelor will sooner 
or later betray the fact that his finer affections are 
starved. It is next to impossible for him to hide from 
the world the wrong to which he is subjecting himself. 
His character will invariably show that it is warped 
and weak and lame, and his life will be barren of all 
those manifestations which flow from domestic affections 
abundantly fed. Here and there, one like Washington 
Irving will nourish a love transplanted to Heaven, and 
bring around him the sweet faces and delicate natures 
of women, to minister to a thirsting heart, and preserve, 
as he did, his geniality and tenderness to the last ; but 
such as he are comparatively few. An old bachelor, 
voluntarily single, always betrays a nature badly fed in 
one of its important departments. So, too, those who 
marry, but who are not blest with children, betray the 
lack of food. Many of these hunger through life for 
children to feed their affections, and take on peculiari- 
ties that betray the fact that something is wrong with 
them. Some adopt children in order to supply a want 
which seems imperative, and others take pets of differ- 



The Food of Life. 331 

ent kinds to their bosoms, ranging through the scale 
from birds to bull-dogs. It is a familiar trick of starved 
faculties and. affections to take on a morbid appetite, 
and feed themselves on the strangest of supplies. 

So, if a man would live a full and generous life, he 
must supply it with a full and generous diet. So far as 
his ability will go, he should make his home the em- 
bodiment of his best taste. There should be abundant 
meaning in its architecture. There should be pictures 
upon its walls, and books upon its shelves and tables. 
All the domestic and social affections should be abun- 
dantly fed there. His table should be a gathering place 
for friends. Music should minister to him. He should 
bring himself into contact with the great and wise and 
good, who have embalmed their lives in the varied 
forms of art. The facts that live in the earth under his 
feet, the beauty that spreads itself around him, and all 
those truths which appeal to his religious nature, are 
food which should minister to his life. An irreligious 
man — no matter what his genius may be — is always a 
starveling. An unsocial man can by no possibility lead 
a true life. A man's nature should be thrown wide 
open at every point, to drink in the nourishment that 
comes from the healthy sources of supply; and thus 
only may his life become abundantly rich and beauti- 
ful. I repeat the proposition that I started with : we 
cannot get more out of human life than we put into it. 



332 Leflbns in Life. 



There is another aspect of this subject that I have 
barely space to allude to. The illustration with which 
this article opens, touching the effects of hay and grain 
respectively upon the life of the horse, suggests that 
the food with which our bodies are nourished may have 
an important bearing upon our mental and moral life. 
Of this I have no doubt. Coarse food, made of mate- 
rial but feebly vitalized, makes coarse men and women. 
Muscular tissues not formed from choice material, 
brains built of poor stuff, nervous fibres to which the 
finest and most delicate food has not ministered, are 
not the instruments of the highest grade of mental fife. 
The dispensation of sawdust is passed away. It is 
pretty well understood that the most complicated, the 
noblest, and the finest creature in the world requires 
the best food the world can produce ; and that he re- 
quires it in great variety. If a man leads simply an 
animal life — eating, working, and sleeping — let him 
feed as animals do ; but if he lives a life above animals, 
as a social and religious being, then let him take food 
that gives pleasure to his palate, and pluck and power 
to all the instruments of his mind. Hay may answer 
very well for a mind that moves at the rate of only 
three miles an hour ; but a mile was never yet made 
"inside of 2:40 " without grain. 






LESSON XXIV. 

HALF-FINISHED WOKK. 

"Ah God ! well, art is long! 
And life is short and fleeting. 

"What headaches have I felt and what heart-beating, 
When critical desire was strong. 
How hard it is the ways and means to master 
By which one gains each fountain head ! 
And ere one yet has half the journey sped 
The poor fool dies— O sad disaster ! " 

Beooks' Teanslation of Fattst. 

MANKIND are "nothing, if not critical;" and 
nothing would seem to be criticism with them 
but fault-finding. It is astonishing to see what a num- 
ber of architects there are in the world — how many- 
people there are who feel competent to give an opinion 
upon buildings in course of erection on the public 
streets. If a dwelling is going up, there is not a day 
of its progress in which its builder or architect is not 



334 Leffons in Life. 

convicted of being a fool, by any number of wise peo- 
ple who judge him on the evidence of a half-finished 
structure. When the dwelling is completed, it usually 
"looks better than they ever supposed it could;" but 
they learn nothing from this, though the proverb that 
"only fools criticize half-finished work" is a good deal 
older than they are. Every man who builds is obliged 
to take this running fire of fault-finding. Passing a 
new church recently, in the company of an architect, I 
asked him what he thought of the building. " I can 
tell better when the staging is down," was his reply. 
He knew enough not to criticize half-finished work, 
while probably a hundred men, knowing nothing of 
architecture whatever, had, during that very day, freely 
given their opinion of the building in the most unquali- 
fied way. 

Did it ever occur to the reader of this essay that 
nearly all the judgments that are made up and ex- 
pressed in this world relate to half-finished work ? We 
hear a great deal of criticism indulged in with regard 
to American society. I have no doubt that this criti- 
cism is just, in a certain sense, but American society 
is only a half-finished structure. If it had arrived at 
the end of improvement and growth ; if the elements 
which enter into it had already organized themselves 
in their highest form ; if the creation of a high, refined, 
and beautiful society were not a thing of time; if such 



Half-Finiflied Work. 335 

a society did not depend upon the operation of forces 
that require a great range of influences and circum- 
stances, then the criticism might be entirely just ; but 
it is as unreasonable to expect a high grade of social 
life in America, at this point of American history, as it 
is to expect perfection in a church before the carpenters 
get out of it, and the staging is down. Wealth, learn- 
ing, culture, leisure — these cannot be so combined in 
this country yet as to give us the highest grade and 
style of social life. We are all at work upon the struc- 
ture, and unless American ideas are incurably bad, and 
we are faithless to our duties, American society will 
be good when the work upon it is completed. No 
society is to be condemned so long as it is progressive 
toward a goodly completeness. 

Men and women are always judging one another 
before they are finished. A raw boy, with only the 
undeveloped elements of manhood in him, is denounced 
as a dunce. A light-hearted, sportive girl, with an in- 
continent overflow of spirits, is condemned as a hoiden. 
Neither boy nor girl is half made. There is only the 
frame-work of the man and woman up, and it does not 
appear what they are to become. A young man is 
wild, and judged accordingly. It is not remembered 
that there are various modifying influences to be 
brought to bear upon him, before he will be a man. 
We see the bold outline of a new house, and we say 



336 Leffons in Life. 

that it is not beautiful. Soon, however, a piazza is 
built here, and a dormer is pushed out there, and 
gracefully modelled chimneys pierce the roof, and cor- 
nice and verandah and tower are added, until the 
structure stands before us complete in beauty, conven- 
ience, and strength. When we condemn a young 
man we do not stop to think that he is not done, — 
that there is a wife to place upon one side of him, and 
children to be grouped upon the other, and sundry re- 
lations to be adjusted before we can tell any thing 
about him at all. 

There is nothing more common in experience and 
observation than the partiality felt by young and un- 
married men for the society of married women, and 
the love of unmarried young women for the society of 
married men. I suppose that nearly every young man 
and young woman has a time of feeling that all the de- 
sirable matches in the world are disposed of, and that 
the marriageable young persons left are really very in- 
sipid companions. This is entirely natural, but exceed- 
ingly unreasonable. To expect a man to be as much 
of a man without a wife as with one, is just as reason- 
able as to expect a half-finished house to be as beautiful 
as a finished one. It is impossible for an unmarried 
man, other things being equal, to be as agreeable a 
companion as a married man; and lest I be sus- 
pected of a jest in this statement, I wish to assure my 



Half-Finilhed Work. 337 

reader that I am entirely in earnest. Intimate contact 
with the nature of a good woman, in the relation of 
marriage, is just as necessary to the completeness of 
manhood, as the details of an architectural design are 
to the homely conveniences around which they are 
made to cluster. Every man is a better man for having 
children, and the more he extends those relations which 
grow out of the family life, the more does he open up 
to culture and carry to completeness the very choicest 
portions of his manly nature. It is natural, therefore, 
that the unmarried woman should become possessed of 
the notion that all the desirable men are married, and 
that the unmarried man should be the subject of a sim- 
ilar mistake with relation to the other sex. It must 
be remembered that men and women are made desir- 
able by matrimony, and that half-finished work should 
not be subjected to any sweeping judgments. 

Men and women are always turning out differently 
from what we expected and predicted they would. 
Men who have been laughed at and slighted during all 
their early life, become, quite to our surprise, very im- 
portant and notable persons, and we are mortified to 
ascertain that we have been criticizing half-finished 
men. The college faculty give a diploma to some very 
slow young man, with great reluctance, but in the 
course of twenty years he completes himself, and when 
he comes back to honor them with a visit they make 
15 



338 



Leffons in Life. 



very low bows to him. All young people are pieces of 
unfinished work, to be judged very carefully, and al- 
ways to be regarded as incomplete* We can say that 
we do not like their general style, as we would say 
that we do not like the style of an unfinished house. 
Grecian may not be to our liking, and we may prefer 
Gothic. 

It seems to me that the Christian Church suffers 
more from the judgments of those who criticize unfin- 
ished work than any organized body of men and wo- 
men. Here is an organization whose members do not 
pretend to perfection ; whose whole theory forbids any 
such idea. They are disciples — learners of the Divine 
Master. They are members of a school in which none 
ever arrives at fulness of knowledge. Their prayer is 
that they may grow ; and they know that if they have 
the true life in them they will grow while they live. If 
there is one thing in the world of which they are pain- 
fully conscious, it is that they are pieces of unfinished 
work. Some of the members are very much lower in 
the scale of completeness than others. In some there 
is only a confused pile of timber and bricks. In others 
only a part of the frame is up, or the walls are hardly 
more than begun. In others, joerhaps, the roof is on. 
In comparatively few do we see the outlines all defined 
and the rooms in a good degree of completeness. In 
none of them is there a perfected structure, and none 



Half-Finilhed Work. 339 

see and acknowledge their incompleteness more than 
those whose characters are farthest advanced toward 
perfection. 

Now I put it to the world outside of the Christian 
Church to say if it has been entirely fair, and just in its 
judgments of the Church. Has it not judged Chris- 
tianity by these imperfect disciples, and has it not con- 
demned these imperfect disciples because they are not 
what they never pretended to be ? Has it not criti- 
cized half-finished work, and condemned, not only the 
work, but Christianity itself, because this work was not 
up to the sample ? It is very common to hear men 
say that such and such a Christian is no better than 
the average of people outside of the Christian Church, 
thus condemning the genuineness of his character be- 
cause he is not a perfect Christian. A house is a house, 
even if it be only half-finished. At least, it is not any 
thing else ; and as Christians cannot by any possibility 
be perfected on the instant, it follows that the large 
majority of Christians must be in various stages of 
progress — nay, that most of this large majority are not 
even half-finished. The Christian Church itself is a 
piece of unfinished work, and every individual member 
is the same. It is not pretended that either is any 
thing else. I never knew a Christian to set himself 
up as a pattern. So far as I know, they are very shy 
of pretension, and deprecate nothing more than the 



340 Leffons in Life. 

thought that anybody should take them for finished 
specimens of the work of Christianity in human life and 
character. 

A sermon upon any important subject is always 
a piece of unfinished work. I once heard a famous 
preacher say that he could preach throughout his whole 
life on the text, " the heart is deceitful above all things 
and desperately wicked," and even then have some- 
thing left to say. The statement illustrates the many- 
sidedness of truth, and the multitude of its relations to 
the life of the individual and the world. Any sensible 
preacher knows that, within the compass of a single 
sermon, he can only present a single aspect of a great 
and important truth, yet he is criticized as if it had 
been expected that the work of a dozen volumes could 
be crowded into the utterances of half an hour. What 
is called an " exhaustive " sermon would exhaust an 
audience long before it would its subject. A sermon 
is only the dab of a brush upon a great picture, and if 
it gives a single striking view of a single great truth, 
it accomplishes its object. It must necessarily be an 
unfinished piece as regards its exposition of truth ; and 
the same may be said of any essay on any subject. 
Every writer begins in the middle of things, and leaves 
off in the middle ot things •; and every thing he writes 
relates at some point to every thing that everybody 
has written. 'No man cleans up the field over which 



Half-Finiflied Work. 341 

he walks, and leaves nothing to be said ; and the best 
we do is unfinished work. 

There are those who, in view of the sin and suffer- 
ing which appear on every hand, are moved to impugn 
the goodness and love of Him who created the world 
by His power, and sustains and orders it by His provi- 
dence. Millions are whelmed in the darkness of hea- 
thenism ; other millions are bound by the chains of 
slavery ; the oppressor is clothed in purple and fine linen; 
the beautiful and innocent are the victims of treach- 
erous lust ; children cry for bread beneath the windows 
of luxury ; justice is denied- to the poor by men who 
take bribes of wealth; and deceit circumvents and 
baffles honor. Such a world as this the critics condemn 
as a failure, which reflects alike upon the benevolence 
and power of its Maker ; but these men have an emi- 
nent place among the fools who criticize half-finished 
work. If they could have witnessed the creation of 
the earth, and watched it through all the processes by 
which it was prepared for the reception of the human 
race, they would doubtless have been quite as critical 
as they are now, and quite as unreasonable. Suppose 
a man should visit his pear-trees in midsummer, and 
on tasting the fruit upon them, should condemn them 
and order them to be cut down and removed — how 
should we characterize his folly ? He has criticized 
half-finished fruit, and made a fatal mistake. It is just 



342 LeiTons in Life. 

as unreasonable to condemn a half-finished world as a 
half-finished pear. Human society must be brought 
to perfection by regularly instituted and slowly operat- 
ing processes. It may take as long to perfect society 
as it did to create the world that it lives on ; and God 
is not to be found fault with for the flavor of a fruit 
slowly ripening beneath the light of His smile and the 
warmth of His love, but not yet fully ripe. 

Mr. Buckle has undertaken to write a history of 
civilization, or, rather, he has commenced to write an 
introduction to a history of civilization. His progress 
has not been great, and he doubtless realizes that he 
has undertaken a task which he can never finish. He 
will probably labor upon it while he lives, and then 
some other daring man will take up the thread where 
he will drop it, and go on until he in turn will be 
obliged to relinquish his unfinished task to a successor. 
Yvlien the work shall be finished, after its original de- 
sign, it will doubtless be found to be antiquated. It 
undertook to organize a half-finished life — to reason 
upon forces that had only half revealed their nature 
and their power — to develop principles whose relations 
were imperfectly known. In short, it must necessarily 
prove to be a half-finished history of a half-finished 
civilization, whose every newly-opened event will throw 
a modifying light on all that shall have preceded it. 

We have, therefore, but little finished work in this 



Half-Finiflied Work. 343 

world. Not a finished character lives among mankind. 
ISTo nation of the world illustrates a consummate civil* 
ization. All presentations of truth, of whatever nature 
and relation, are necessarily incomplete. Life is too 
short, comprehension too limited in its grasp, and ex- 
pression too feeble or too clumsy, to allow the mind 
fully to organize, vitalize, and fill out to roundness and 
just proportion, a single creature of legitimate art. 
It is, therefore, literally true that the criticisms of the 
world are the judgments of the world's half-finished 
men on the world's half-finished affairs. Imperfection 
sits in judgment on incompleteness, and the natural 
consequence is that criticism, in whatever field of 
demonstration, is little more than a record of notions 
which assume to array themselves against other notions, 
which may be better or worse than those that oppose 
them. 

It is with a depressing sense of the incompleteness 
of these lessons in life, that I now indite their closing 
paragraph. I cannot but be aware that the criticisms 
I have indulged in relate very largely to half-finished 
work, and I painfully feel that they are the product of 
a most imperfect judgment. If the reader has found 
them kind, charitable, hopeful — tending toward that 
which is good — and lenient toward human frailty, loyal 
to common sense, and faithful to virtue ; if he has found 
in them that which leaves him a larger and a more 



344 Leffons in Life. 

liberal man — advanced in some degree toward that 
perfection which we are ever striving for, but which 
we never reach, then my aim has been accomplished, 
and I bid him God speed ! 



THE END. 



